Finding a REAListic Price Tag for Fresh Leads

ADOTAS EXCLUSIVE — Don’t you wish someone could put a realistic price tag on finding new leads or customers via online advertising?

And while we’re preparing a wish list … Wouldn’t you like to stop shooting in the dark with banner ad campaigns that, when over, you only know approximately how many random clicks it generated? How about getting a better handle on ROI, or knowing how much revenue in certain market segments can be attributed to the campaign? Or even better yet, how would you like to be able to analyze price sensitivity in different market segments based on online information while the campaign is going on?

If you can answer the first question, I believe the rest of your wish list can come true. There’s an exciting new paradigm in the world of digital marketing: integrated results-based online advertising that is based on answering one fundamental question: how much are you willing to pay for the desired result, whatever it may be –- a new lead, customer, sale, click or registration? The definition of this “acquisition cost target,” which is derived from an overall “customer value,” is the foundation of intelligent online advertising campaigns that consistently “learn” throughout the entire conversion cycle. Integrated results-based online advertising is also flexible enough to allow the fundamental definitions themselves to change along the way, based on different customer-value data from different market segments, media types and conversion processes.

Optimize every step of the way

While the results-based information is valuable in and of itself, it really only gets us part of the way there. The trick is to be able to optimize the data and apply it intelligently based on real-time feedback that is gleaned from the conversion process itself. This kind of optimized campaign allows advertisers to measure and analyze each and every component of the conversion process on-the-fly and apply sensitivity analysis to fine-tune the matrix as they go along. This is what makes the integrated results-based approach so much more powerful than conventional online advertising models. For instance, we can alter keywords, shift ads to better-performing sites, perfect e-mail and landing page texts, and enhance banner designs as we go along – based on the measurable results received from the different advertising platforms. This is the way to effectively squeeze every possible benefit from every dollar our clients spend.

Integration: backwards and forwards

It’s important to remember that despite this robust information-gathering, results-based online advertising is only as good as the breadth of the online tools available, and how they are leveraged together. Results need to be integrated, as well as optimized, across the entire range of online advertising platforms and tools at our disposal, such as Ad networks, search engine marketing and email campaigns.
Knowledge gained in any one of these platforms must immediately be made available to current ongoing campaigns in other platforms and rapidly optimized to guarantee continuously improved results.

Integrating all your marketing assets

The next step is full integration with existing CRM system, turning the campaign into a sophisticated marketing tool that allows you to target market segments, such as discounts to first-time buyers –opening a plethora of cross-sell opportunities. Having this range of tools at your disposal gives you total control of the sales cycle -– from the very first impression all the way to the desired conversion. Control that is always focused on positive ROI.

With this dynamic monitoring, analysis and optimization, advertisers and publishers gain new insight into all their online advertising activities. Knowledge gained from any one platform is immediately made available to ongoing campaigns on the other platforms and rapidly optimized to guarantee continuously improved results.

So when you choose enter the world of online marketing, or want to test new methods in existing online campaign, think beyond siloed banner ads, SEM and e-mail campaigns. Put them all together in an integrated, result-based approach. The sum is far greater than the parts. And you will see measurable results that translate into bottom-line benefits.

So in the end, you know exactly how much it costs to sell the doggie in the window … for exactly what it’s worth. That’s simply better business.

Rogue Lead-Generators Can Tarnish Your Good Name

How Illegitimate Players Dupe Consumers by Associating With Trusted Brands

By William Hupp

Published: March 10, 2008

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- It seemed like a good offer -- a little too good to be true.

When Heather Miceli went online to redeem $100 worth of L.L. Bean coupons, she Googled the company name to find its official website, and a paid search ad caught her eye: "L.L. Bean (official site): get a $250 gift card." She clicked on it and was taken to Llbgiftcard.com, which read that if she took a survey, she would receive a free $250 gift card.

Ms. Miceli, who lives on Cape Cod, Mass., was lured in by an online lead-generation offer, part of a $1 billion industry. Llbgiftcard.com calls itself an "independent rewards program not affiliated with any of the listed products or retailers," and it makes money by generating leads for its sponsors. It's unclear whether Ms. Miceli ever would have gotten the proffered $250 L.L. Bean gift card, but what is clear is the offer wasn't actually "free" at all.

Paying for free
On Llbgiftcard.com, Ms. Miceli navigated through pages of survey questions and magazine-subscription offers and eventually learned she had to shell out money to get her gift card. The offer she chose was to buy a $20 coupon book from Yourfreegiftcard.com.

Nearly a week later, she hadn't received the gift card and sent an e-mail to Freeport, Maine-based L.L. Bean. A customer-service representative said L.L. Bean was being deluged with calls and e-mails from customers voicing similar concerns, and authorities were working on the problem.

Even though the fine print of the Llbgiftcard.com offer states it has no association with retailers such as L.L. Bean, the domain name shows it hopes consumers do in fact associate it with the retailer -- and that can be damaging to a hard-earned brand, said Jason Malo, senior manager of brand-protection services at Verisign. "Any kind of trusted brand is a potential target for them. ... The goodwill and trust that the company has built under that brand is what ensures that somebody will fill out the survey."

A spokeswoman for L.L. Bean said she couldn't speak about that story specifically but added: "We do understand that we need to protect our customers. It is difficult, but we try to make sure that occurrences like this happen at a minimum."

"To prove trademark infringement you have to prove likelihood of confusion arising from the use of the mark as to source, sponsorship or affiliation," said Mitch Stabbe, head of trademark practice at Washington law firm Dow Lohnes.

Rogue players
At its best, online lead generation can be useful for helping companies acquire highly qualified customers. But at its worst, rogue players tarnish the names of legitimate ones.

At the very least, the tactic used to lure Ms. Miceli was misleading; it was a search ad claiming to be the official L.L. Bean site, when in fact it was not affiliated with the brand. Google tries to confirm the veracity of every website associated with a paid search ad but acknowledged that there is a small window of time in which a false offer might appear.

The Interactive Advertising Bureau a month ago issued industry-written guidelines for best practices in lead generation, and the Federal Trade Commission has said free offers must be made "with extreme care so as to avoid any possibility that consumers will be misled or deceived." Joe Rosenbaum, partner at law firm Reed Smith, said in this case it sounds like L.L. Bean "could have recourse if they can find them."

Two weeks ago Verisign's Mr. Malo said LLBGiftCard.com was registered to KZ Group, but found as of March 2, it no longer was. Ad Age's attempts to locate contact information for the site were unsuccessful.

His advice for marketers: "Be aware of the problem and understand how your brand may be misused on the internet. Listen to your customers and make sure they have a conduit into you to report any issues, and also go out proactively look for brand abuses."

CLIENT ALERT: reply.com

Company Info
Company Info Our Values Management Team Media Jobs Top 10 Reasons to work at Reply! Contact Us	About Reply! Reply! Inc. was founded in 2001 by a veteran team of Internet entrepreneurs as a lead generation and performance-based online marketing company. In 1994, this same team established the first online car buying service—Autoweb.com—and in 1999 took that company public. Today we have over 10,000 clients for whom we generate leads in the automotive, real estate, mortgage, and insurance industries. We see a tremendous opportunity in the evolution from CPM to CPC to Cost-Per-Lead marketing. Clearly, an intentful consumer who has provided a phone number and requested to be contacted by a local service provider (such as a real estate agent or an auto dealer) is significantly more valuable to the average online advertiser than either an impression or a click on a website. In March of 2008, Reply! will launch a new platform that will make the process of buying a lead as efficient as it is today for an advertiser to buy clicks through Google or Yahoo. We believe it is time that advertisers go beyond the click and pay only for measurable results. That has always been the promise of online marketing, and we look forward to making that promise a reality for a larger number of advertisers on the web.
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Shoperion = Advaliant + Advario innovation tools

Extremely interesting technology built by our technology partner ELC Technology ( they are building all our new systems with Joe M.) these are very interesting mini tools that we could have in the Advaliant system as tools for publishers and advertisers. They are the next wave of embedded mini apps or widgets that STAY embedded!! We need to have a section for these in Advaliant. Where clients can give us theirs like the mobile widget PlayPhone is giving us. Also for ones we can create based on needs we see in the market. These could also be inside Advario intext ads. This is VERY INNOVATIVE and hands down the direction the market is headed. www.shoperion.com

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rightcart"> RightCart fliplead"> FlipLead hoverpage"> HoverPage pushvote"> PushVote runcards"> RunCards Dashboard RightCart The in-page shopping revolution RightCart is helping reshape what people think about e-commerce. With the ability to add a complete shopping solution to your website in seconds. You can turn any web page into a store effortlessly. "RightCart is the end-game in shopping" -Amazon.com FlipLead Next generation, lead generation. Fliplead the a new way to deliver leads not just clicks to advertisers. Using our patented in-page technology we can expect more from our ad space and keep the audience on your website. HoverPage Bring your landing page to them. Unlike standard display ads, HoverPages use Ajax technology to allow users to visit and interact with your landing page without leave the site they are on. Allowing Publishers to retain the audience and advertisers to deliver more. PushVote Opinions matter Survey, polls and reviews help us to learn more about what people are thinking and guide our decisions. PushVote makes it easy to create, launch and review results from surveys while enhancing your site's experience for customers. RunCards Your site, your sale. Experiece is important when completing a sale on the web. RunCards is a mixture between RightCart and FlipLead and allows you to accept credit cards on your site to deliver and cohesive sales process easily. Dashboard One to rule them all. Mangaing web apps, creating new AdSpots and selling your ad space can be conquered using Dashboard. Brining innovation to help both novice and seasoned marketers to get more revenue out of their websites. Beyond Banners Shoperion helps advertisers, publishers and retailers engage customers through innovative web applications. Each application can be added to your website and help to add the ability to sell items, capture leads, take a survey and receive payments. Unlike traditional display advertising embed-able web applications keep the user on a publishers website to increase overall yield from the audience.

IAB Tackles Lead-Generation Best Practices

by Gavin O'Malley, Thursday, Aug 16, 2007 6:00 AM ET

AMID CONTINUED CONTROVERSY SURROUNDING THE business of lead generation, the Interactive Advertising Bureau stepped in Wednesday with a list of best practices to help standardize the transfer and receipt of data between advertisers and lead-generation service providers. First on the IAB's list of priorities is security, imploring that all lead-generation data--the detailed information consumers give marketers online--should be transferred and received in an encrypted format. Secondly, the IAB is stressing common format and setup, so all data is transferred in a common format through secure Web technologies. "The committee encourages advertisers and publishers to implement these best practices and comply with all applicable laws, rules, and regulations," said Gayle Guzzardo, senior vice president of product management at Q Interactive and an IAB Lead Generation committee chair. Trading in customer leads has become big business in recent years. Marketers spent $1.3 billion on lead generation in 2006--more than doubling the $753 million spent in 2005, and making up 8% of all online ad dollars spent last year, according to the IAB and PricewaterhouseCoopers. Still, marketers are questioning the legitimacy of many of the leads being generated--particularly those attained through incentives like marked-down iPods. In addition, the Federal Trade Commission has expressed its concern over potential privacy violations and false advertising claims. Of note, one of the companies endorsing the IAB's new initiative is ValueClick Media--which has seen its stock fall nearly 40% since May, in part due to its involvement in incentive-based lead generation. In May, ValueClick acknowledged that the FTC was conducting an inquiry into the company's lead-generation activities. The IAB has tried its hand at regulating lead generation before. Most recently, in March, in conjunction with its Lead Generation Committee, the group released the "IAB Marketer & Agency Guide to Lead Quality," which reviewed the definition and aspects of Internet lead quality, as well as lead quality's impact on advertisers' marketing strategies. The guide also provided a ranking system for marketers to use to assess the overall quality of leads based on specific industry benchmarks.

IAB and Lead Generation Committee Release Best Practices for Lead Generation

You know, this just doesn't
look encrypted to me.

The Lead Generation Committee and the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) have today released the Lead Generation Data Transfer Best Practices.

At the most practical level, the document will help standardize the transfer and reception of data between advertisers and lead generators.

Two major considerations served as guidelines for the final product:

• Security - lead generation data should be encrypted
• Common format and set up - the data must move in a common format through mainstream, secure internet technologies

"The committee encourages advertisers and publishers to implement these best practices and comply with all applicable laws, rules, and regulations to responsibly support the continued growth of this very important category," said SVP Gayle Guzzardo of Product Management at Q Interactive. She is also the Lead Generation Committee Chair.

Per the IAB/PwC 2006 Full Year Internet Advertising Revenue Report, lead generation revenue totaled $1.3 billion out of all 2006 advertising revenues ($16.9 billion), up from a (now seemingly paltry) $753 million in 2005.

The Explosion Of Hosted Lead Generation... Good and Bad

by Eric Obeck, Thursday, Jul 26, 2007 3:30 PM ET

IT HAS BEEN A LONG time coming, but 2007 is seeing the explosion (in a bad way) of third-party hosted lead generation. I predict, however, that later this year and in 2008 we will see an explosion (in a good way) of this type of lead generation. Hopefully, marketers won't be so snake-bit by a previous bad experience that they avoid jumping back into the market when the best opportunities in hosted lead generation begin to avail themselves shortly down the road. I define "hosted lead generation" as the practice of marketers positioning lead forms on third party Web sites wherein the consumer completes the form, submits it and his or her data is transferred to the marketer. Leads from co-registrations and lead aggregators would fall into this category. Many marketers had bad experiences with these types of leads in the past because some third-party Web sites that host such leads took measures to gather the leads, which ultimately compromised the true intent of the consumer and therefore the quality of the leads generated. For example, offering incentives, prizes, gifts, or "points" to fill in lead forms generally does not improve the quality of the leads you receive. While there are exceptions to this statement, things recently got a bit out-of-hand with this practice. In many cases, because the lead forms were not hosted by the advertiser, the advertiser did not know the context in which someone filled in the form. As I write this, there are brilliant minds working in far-off corners of the Internet to expose the bad practices and clean things up. These minds work for publishers, advertisers, ad agencies, government agencies, trade groups, etc... The smoke from the bad "explosion" is now clearing and, from what I've seen, best practices are emerging. Several initiatives are already in place to promote a positive shift in hosted lead generation. OLGA (the Online Lead Generation Association) and I are working together to prepare a series of sessions for the upcoming OMMA East conference dedicated to lead-generation best-practices. Also, I have been pleased to participate in drafting sessions for a Lead Generation Best Practices document that the Interactive Advertising Bureau will likely publish in the next few weeks. I'm most excited to be a part of two projects involving highly credible Fortune 500 companies that are developing hosted lead generation capabilities on their Web sites. Both receive highly targeted and valuable traffic - in fact, well over 10 million unique visitors a month. Both will absolutely deploy best practices when it comes to hosted lead generation. I can't help but think that other big initiatives I don't know about are taking place behind the scenes, all of which are going to lead to a significant and positive explosion in online hosted lead generation in the very near future. Get ready! Eric Obeck is president of SendTec, Inc., a marketer providing a full complement of multi-channel agency services integrated with the search channel.

Guide to Taking Money

http://www.dmconfidential.com/blogs/column/Digital_Thoughts/1352/

Those doing lead generation occupy an enviable space. It's a business that has faired well during the ad recovery, and despite some hiccups that arose as a New Century imploded, more verticals than not have an optimistic outlook. Unlike the ad network technology space, instead of a flurry of acquisition activity, deals have occurred steadily, the most recent being a majority investment into Nextag that valued the comparison shopping and lead generation firm north of one billion dollars. Many of the people that I've met in the lead generation space didn't enter lead generation with a grand vision. They saw it as a chance to make money, and usually they had some prior Internet advertising experience as well as some vertical expertise. Much of that prior work experience came at another cash flow focused startup, not at a venture backed firm. Even as they grow now, they don't necessarily think about having outside investors.

If you find your business in a state of growth where having access to more money could help you grow faster, such as pay for more affiliate traffic, then you might consider taking in funding. If you have a technology or process that has played a crucial role in your growth and find that you could do so much more if you could hire more engineers or perhaps sales people to bring in the clients, here too you might want an outside investor. Obviously, having outside investors is not for everyone. They will hold you accountable and push you for results. They will challenge you and have no problems replacing you. For these same reasons they can also become a huge catalyst to growth and guide you towards an exit bigger than you would have thought. And, even if you ultimately decide not to accept funding, the process can add a lot of value. This week, we thought we'd share with you our thoughts on what to expect if you start to engage outside investors from outside the industry and tips for when you do meet.

What to Expect:

· Think High School - Investors come in all types. The ones who came from our industry or work in our industry still, you probably won't think of them as investors. For lack of a better description, they feel like one of us. Others won't, and those we describe here. While a slight over-generalization, some of the ones we have met give off the same vibe as Hollywood A-Listers or the in-crowd at high school. They have their circle, and they look very critically upon those outside the circle. You are there because you might need something of them. Almost all of them have made their money, so they can afford to view you, not with disdain, but indifference. Dealing with them comes with a lot of rejection and comments that an outsider not having to live the day to day can afford to make. It's a different story when you've created the next Facebook. Then, you're like the college quarterback coming back on winter break. The cheerleaders will want your attention and the other jocks will too. If they don't, then you can chalk it up to jealousy, and you won't care anyway. Dealing with some investors is a "what can you do for me" environment.

· Superman or Vampire - An investor can do a lot of things for you, and most have dual developed dual personalities. On the one hand, they have knowledge and resources you don't. They have the ability to open doors, get favorable terms, and increase the value of your brand in ways that a lone entity simply can't. They also have the same power in reverse. They can suck you dry. Take away your spirit, put pressures on you to change your business, even play a role in removing you from your own business. Ultimately, it's a little of both. They are there to add value and take value from you. The trick is making sure it's in that order.

· "Next" - Meeting with investors feels like a different version of MTV's dating show, Next. You will have your time with them. If you make it through the full date, you get funding. But, they can and will lose interest and sometimes for reasons that won't make sense to you or the viewing audience. Like Next, they have other options waiting, but they are also wondering whether the ones that follow you aren't as good. Luckily, they can choose more than one date, but it's a helpful analogy as you remember that they are always in search of the next thing.


Tips:

· Be Confident - Investors invest. They need you to execute. You have created something that got their attention in the first place. They might have a better grasp of how to build a billion dollar business and can lead mind numbingly complex conversations about solving the business ecosystem, but they don't know your business. Ultimately, they have money they need to place, and as often as not, they judge the business by the person. If they can believe in you, that's a huge factor in their decision. When you talk, if you don't agree with their assumptions, don't roll over. Challenge. Push back. Do it based on reason and experience and not simply because they have some doubt.

· Think Like Them - Management books always talk about being able to think like your boss for being a better employee. Understand their objectives and how you can accomplish them. The same holds true for investors. They want growth, and they want an exit. They want longevity even if they will flip your company. They need something that will sell well to others. An over-priced conference series like Elite Retreat is interesting, but an investor won't want to sink money in it or buy it out. It can grow to a multi-million dollar business and make a handful of people quite wealthy, but in its current format it has a ceiling. It's not like Right Media, where if you apply it to Yahoo, you don't see 1+1 = 2 but 1+1 = 3. Now, if Elite Retreat didn't accept money but took a stake in the companies, then it might be more interesting, or if it tried to see more companies than fewer with the aim of putting pieces together to form a larger company, then it has the type of growth and potential outside investors want to see.

· Listen Selectively - Much of what they say will sound like criticism, and you could easily take it personally. Think of it like a movie or reality show. The dialogue used in movies would break up most relationships if used in real life. But it has dramatic flare. Investors often operate in a bubble and talk about you and your business as though you aren't there. Like a movie, listen for the main points, the insight you can use, but don't let the negative get your down. They often don't know they are doing it. You and your business are just business. There is nothing personal in this. In the end, pretend it's not really you that is being discussed, much like a movie is not about you but for you.


Now fully armed, if you would like an introduction or more information, email us.

Sweepstakes As Acquisition Tool: What Do You Really Win?

by Jamie Schissler, Monday, April 2, 2007
A LOT OF FOLKS ARE jazzed up these days about doing sweepstakes, particularly in the context of list building. And list building is itself all the rage in the context of a shifting advertising and media paradigm. Despite the critics who think email is passé, email is hot, hot, hot. Everyone, it seems, wants an opt-in subscriber list, and they want it now.
The tides are shifting in advertising as a consequence of changes in consumer attitudes towards, and consumption of, marketing and content. Mass media is on its way out -- at least mass media as we know it. Relationship marketing is in.
Marketing and advertising are feeling the gravitational pull of a model that has at its core relationship building, individual preferences, information-based content, and dialogue. And email is the powerhouse that serves all four. Brands must develop and cultivate their own unique audience with content that contains its own value proposition. Hence the increasing necessity to develop an opt-in database.
Marketers can see the logical progression of sweepstakes and promotions: The brand gains visibility by offering consumers a chance to win prizes, in exchange for their opt-in email addresses. But let's pause for a moment to evaluate the role and benefit of sweepstakes.
First, sweepstakes and promotions are short-term, high-impact motivators. A giveaway acts like a shot of adrenaline to your marketing efforts: it creates a burst of visibility and causes a traffic spike or exposure surge, but the impact can be expensive to sustain. Sweepstakes can extend the relationship with consumers who are already engaged with your brand, but by themselves do not typically create strong acquisition returns.
Second, incentivized opt-ins tend to be less responsive than consumers who opt-in as a result of brand values and identity (service, quality, value, experience, etc). Obtaining opt-ins through a promotion or incentive channel is akin to buying a friend rather than developing a friendship. "Hey, I'll buy you dinner if you come out with me Friday night!" Sure, they may go out with you in return for the free dinner, but a relationship? Don't hold your breath waiting for the phone to ring next week. In email terms, these "dates" have a propensity to be low responders to future programs. (Be careful not to degrade your brand by conditioning consumers to an endless cycle of promotions and discounts. Once you go down that path it will take a very long time to reverse.)
Third, sweepstakes can be a costly acquisition proposition. By the time you add in prize costs, prize fulfillment, sweepstakes administration, media spend to promote the sweepstakes, creative, and execution, you will most likely wind up paying a lot more per email address than you need to. Understand what other acquisitions tactics, such as list rental and co-registration, will yield, and be sure to account for all costs when developing your acquisition strategy.
Fourth, you have to have a program to support those people who sign up. If you ask your target to opt-in to "receive valuable information and discounts," you must have a communication plan in place to deliver on that promise. Budget for, plan, and set up your ongoing email program before soliciting names. I see too many brands that develop promotion campaigns with a primary or secondary goal of acquisition, only to have to throw those names away a short time later because they have either not developed a communication plan, or have no remaining budget to do so.
Having worked in the promotion marketing space, I love sweepstakes. They should be a staple in every brand and marketer's toolbox, and I've seen them executed with tremendous success. But just as you wouldn't use a tape measure to drive a nail, sweepstakes are not particularly effective for database growth and development. As a promotional strategy, they are great; as an acquisition strategy, less so. Let sweepstakes supplement your acquisition activities, not spearhead them.
Jamie Schissler is Strategy Director at Avenue A Razorfish.

Generating Leads In A Subprime Mortgage Market

By Kamran Khosravi, President of American Guardian Home Loans
Is now the right time to be in the mortgage or real estate industry? It depends on your point of view.
Every day, lenders and brokers are going out of business or downsizing due to the market slow down. The increasing numbers of foreclosures have prompted investors to tighten guidelines and modify loan programs. Therefore, business is slow because the available pool of potential borrowers has lessened. There are other reasons, but that is the reason drawing the most attention in the media.
Many people chose to enter the profession when business was flourishing to make money quickly. Those people, are now moving out of the industry and are in search of the next hot market trend. Left are professionals committed to the industry and view this mass exodus as a time to purge those that are not. Also, professionals who have been in the industry since the late 80s and early 90s have experienced this business cycle before and look forward to reaping the rewards when the market begins to peak once again.
However, simply having the will to stay in this business and remain profitable while others are ‘jumping ship,’ is not enough. Professionals that remain in the industry must ask the question, “What do we do now?” The answer is to diversify and perfect what you are already good at.
The first step: Diversify your customers and marketing campaigns. Determine who your typical client is and hold a brainstorming session to discover other potential clients. These potentials may have been targeted in the past, but when business was booming, they weren’t worth the time or energy to pursue. With business slowing, they should now be considered. By targeting this new group of clients, you can obtain a wider market share and see opportunities that did not present itself in the past. After you have an agreement on all of your target audiences, hold another brainstorming session to plan a new innovative marketing campaign to reach each audience.
The second step: Perfect your operations. You may have already discovered a successful formula for business processes and expenditures. However, many variables can change its effectiveness. Continued evaluation is vital. Take time now to evaluate every marketing tactic as well as how every lead was managed. Determine why some leads were not converted into profits and make changes to marketing tactic, processes or programs. Now, every lead and marketing dollar is crucial.
During a slow market, you may not get rich quickly, but you can sustain your business or enjoy steady growth. When the market changes, you will be ahead of the game.

Online B2C Lead Gen Bests Offline

Almost half of marketers - some 47 percent - say their businesses are not effectively exploiting online lead generation as a way of growing their B2C business, according to a survey of internet marketers by E-consultancy and Clash-Media.
Four out of five online marketers (82 percent) see online lead generation as a growth area, and 64 percent of online marketers see it as its own distinct area of online marketing. But only 44 percent of B2C marketers say that their organizations are effectively exploiting online lead generation as a way of increasing revenue.
The study also found that three-quarters of respondents working for multi-channel organizations (74 percent) say their companies are generating leads online with the intention of converting them offline.
The report is based on the findings of a survey of more than 400 marketers carried out in January and February 2007.
"The research found that online methods are deemed to be more effective than offline methods when it comes to generating leads in the B2C context," said Linus Gregoriadis, E-consultancy's head of research. "There are huge opportunities… irrespective of whether these are eventually converted online or offline, for example in stores or by telephone."
Key findings of the research include the following:
Press (newspapers and magazines) is the method of offline lead generation most commonly used to generate consumer leads (61% of respondents), followed by direct mail/postal data (51%).
The online methods most likely to be used by company respondents to generate leads are natural search (78% of respondents), paid search (72%) and email marketing via in-house lists (72%).
The most effective methods of generating leads are all online. More than half of company respondents (52%) said that paid search was "very effective" while almost as many (48%) said that natural search was very effective.
Email Marketing via in house lists, affiliate marketing, shopping comparison sites, viral marketing and acquiring leads from online aggregators are deemed very effective by 38%, 34%, 26%, 25%, and 25% of company respondents, respectively.
Paid search gets the biggest share of online lead generation budget allocation (28%).
60% of company respondents say they are either "excellent" (11%), "good" (22%) or "quite good" (27%) at measuring the effectiveness of their online lead generation activity. However, 27% say they are "average" and a further 8% saying they are "poor."
The difficulties associated with measuring the effectiveness of online lead generation activity generally fall into three categories: (1) difficulty of tracking leads through to conversion in a multi-channel environment;(2) lack of technology or poor technology for online tracking; and (3) lack of resources.
Only 16% of company respondents say they buy lists of targeted prospects from online aggregators; 77% of company respondents say they are not using online lead aggregators. Moreover, one-fifth of respondents either "haven't come across this" (12%) or "don't understand how it works" (8%), suggesting that there is an opportunity for aggregators to educate prospective clients about this type of activity. A further 8% said they lacked the time to research this activity.

Calculating the perfect affiliate CPA - Super Affiliate Comment at bottom!

Calculating a competitive CPA is an incredibly important part of any successful affiliate programme and yet it's one of the first hurdles merchants fall at.

With more and more companies launching affiliate programmes, there is a huge amount of choice for affiliates, and if you expect them to promote your programme over your competitors, you need to set the right CPA and continually review it.

Continuing on from the trend in my last post , here are your seven tips for this week, this time on the subject of how to set the right CPA for your affiliate programme....

1) Forget CPA, think EPC – Good affiliates aren’t blinded by a big flashy CPA; it has to translate into a competitive Earnings Per Click (EPC). If your site doesn’t convert it won’t matter how high the CPA is, you still won’t be competitive.

2) Align your channels – If you see affiliate marketing as an opportunity to get sales at a discount CPA you will never realise its true potential. You should always compare your affiliate CPAs to those you are achieving in display and search activity.

If, for example, you run a search campaign, it’s worth bearing in mind that search affiliates will keep an eye on your bid prices. If they see huge discrepancies between the price you’re willing to pay per click, and the effective EPC they earn on your affiliate programme, expect to receive a call demanding a higher CPA.

3) Communicate with affiliates – These are the people you are trying to motivate so speak to them directly. If you’re just about to launch a programme, then ask your network to connect you with strong affiliates in your sector. If your goal is to offer a compelling CPA then most affiliates will be happy to give you their feedback.

4) Understand the true value of a sale/customer – This sounds obvious, but to be able to offer the best CPA possible you need to understand exactly what the customer or sale is worth to you. The best affiliate programmes are often those where the merchant has factored in the lifetime value of the customer and passed this onto the affiliate.

5) Watch the competition – Checking out your competitors' CPAs is an easy job as the information tends to be readily available. Because of EPC’s significance, it is important to dig a little deeper. Make sure you speak to your affiliate network, who should be able to provide you with average EPCs for your sector.

6) Watch the paid search space – Affiliates have more choice than ever when it comes to where they send their traffic, and it’s not just confined to CPA-based models. More and more affiliates are comparing the returns available from contextual advertising options such as Google Adsense to those available through affiliate networks.

If the keyword prices on generic terms are incredibly high, and your CPA does not reflect this, then you may see your affiliates switching to the more profitable contextual advertising.

7) Consider hybrid models – These are becoming more popular and often work by providing affiliates with a CPC rate for all traffic sent and a CPA. Under this model the merchant shares more of the risk in terms of their site converting by guaranteeing the affiliate income on the click, and then a higher bounty if their traffic converts to sales.

Duncan Jennings is the managing director of eConversions, a specialist paid on performance search marketing company.

1. Great points. As a super-affiliate, I often don't care about the things you think I care about.

Your payout means nothing if your product is not competitive. Your competitive product means little if your website is all flash or has dozens of conversion leaks. If you don't pay me fast and accurately, even once, you are likely to lose my trust forever. Don't give me any reason to distrust you.

I do not want to jump through your hoops. I want to market and get paid. I am probably going to be your highest cost leads/sales, but I am also going to be your highest volume driver. Don't approach me and then make it seem like it is an honor for me to work with you.

Super affiliates don't need you. So act like you need them. Concessions like limited creative control or even white label hosting made early in the discussion are more likely to bear fruit than taking the tact of "lets see how things go". I already know how things are going to go. I am never going to put any effort into impressing you for the sake of impressing you.

As a super affiliate. I am making a really good living already. If you cannot significantly add to my profits, then I do not need the headache of helping to grow your business.

It might be an elitist attitude, but the reason you want me on your team is because I am one of the elite. Recruit me like you would a prized employee or even a spouse. I am going to be selective about who I work with, and I like the idea that you too are selective about who you work with....
Posted 22:22 28 Mar 2007 by diorex

Why most of the CPA/Brokerage industry will not be around in 5 years.

from Digital Moses March 22, 2007
by Adrian Bye

Many people currently involved in the CPA industry feel that this industry is rock solid and not likely to change anytime soon. They may be in for a shock. There are developments coming from technological, business and legal areas which are going to have huge ramifications on the industry. One of those just happened.

Specifically I am referring the brokerage fees that CPA networks and brokers charge (around 20%) to push offers to fill the internet demand for remnant inventory, and the inefficiencies and expenses that are put in place by having so many humans involved in making web advertising work. Over time these people will be replaced by technology, just as many industries have been overturned in the past by modernization causing blue collar workers to lose their jobs.

The three biggest sources of traffic for a typical network are:

a. Email marketing

b. Pay per click traffic

c. Web inventory such as banners and text links

We’ll talk about these one by one.

CPA search marketing

Pay per click marketing is changing. Google has just announced it is going to offer a CPA model. At the moment it is possible to make a decent living by being good at PPC arbitrage of CPA offers. This works right now because Google and Yahoo have focused their business model around selling clicks, rather than selling actions. They do this because this is their version of branded CPM advertising – they can generally get more for it.

However, this causes huge inefficiencies in the system, because it is time consuming and complicated to figure out how to drive lots of PPC traffic, enabling therefore arbitrage opportunities.

Since Google has now started offering a CPA system, and Yahoo certainly will, this will change dramatically. Advertisers will be able to add a bunch of creatives into the system, along with a list of keywords and a CPA they are willing to pay. The system will then automatically test the base keywords you inserted, along with an extra list of keywords google generated itself. It will test them all against the various creatives you made; keeping pricing under a certain CPA you have set. The entire system will be fully automated, and the current arbitrage which is possible today will go away. Google and Yahoo can make quite a lot of money by making this change, given the average network commissions and the money made by PPC arbitrage players. Google has already switched and it is just a matter of time before Yahoo does as well.

Notice I don’t mention clickfraud – I don’t believe this impacts Google and Yahoo moving to a CPA model.

Email marketing

Email marketing is an area which is going to change on two fronts. CANSPAM is a law with many loopholes, one that allows people to send as much mail as they want under certain (not very restrictive) limitations. A lot of mail is being sent which does not provide true value to consumers, its simply mass market monetization that is driving volume, a process I really disagree with. At some point a new email law will be passed which requires something like "at the time of sign up, the sending FROM address must be displayed clearly so the consumer knows where they will receive mail from". And brokering of email data will be exclusive only. You join one list, you unsubscribe from that list, period. It’s only a matter of time until something like this is legislated. Don’t think so? A few years ago the telemarketing industry was doing great – now its been decimated with the FTC’s do not call rules. This kind of thing can happen literally overnight – look at how the online gaming industry has been affected recently.

Secondly, deliverability is going to get much more difficult. Right now, most ESP’s can get mail delivered almost anywhere except major ISP’s such as Yahoo and Hotmail. Reputation management is a new trend in email which will change this dramatically. Reputation management means that every IP address which is sending email is certified by an independent third party as to how that IP address is being used to send mail. It provides a lot of data to email receivers on exactly how that IP address is being used. If you’re certified and your reputation is positive, a lot of your mail will automatically be delivered. If you’re not, you’ll get blocked as spam.

Right now reputation management is being used by the major ISPs to confirm mail delivery – but once this is rolled out more widely across internet mail servers, mail blocking will improve dramatically, and those who are sending bulk co-reg data will find their deliverability falling through the floor.

Behavioural targeting

Thirdly, behavioral targeting is going to get much better. This has been talked about in the past, and never seems to truly work properly but it is starting to get much better now. Networks like Blue Lithium and turn.com are making a lot of progress with targeting and collecting a lot of data on their userbase. Reports I hear about Blue Lithium in particular are that it performs extremely well.

Impressive things are being done on the advertiser side to take advantage of behavioural targeting. For example, Think Partnership has a new product called Second Bite which saves shopping cart abandoners. If you decided not to buy a product and half completed your shopping cart, Second Bite will work to get you to finish your purchase. Think Partnership is just starting to buy banner inventory to save the cart purchase. What this means is that you can be browsing the web and you’ll see a banner saying "hey – come back and finish your purchase on and get a 10% discount". Once this kind of inventory is brokered out to major behavioural networks, no general interest CPA offer will be able to compete with the CPM’s they will be able to pay to save a purchase. Sure, this is a narrow application, but many more clever targeting applications of behavioural targeting will appear, increasing CPM’s across the board.

In addition, client side behavioral targeting will increase. By this I mean that users will allow more data to be mined from their computers locally, and some of it will be passed back to the network. In an extreme case, imagine if Microsoft made its Windows OS completely free – but in return for being able to mine behvioural data from your machine. This data would be fed back to online targeting networks such as Blue Lithium, to target web advertising more accurately. No popups or any other nasty applications would be included. That could be a huge value add for consumers – with free software AND better advertising. Yes, this has huge privacy implications, but over time these will be worked out – the ECPM increase from accurate targeting will be too valuable, and consumers will not mind their data being mined in aggregate.

That’s not to say that everything is bad. Some areas of the CPA and brokerage industry will continue to work well. These include:

1) Coupon and affiliate sites. Publishers that are actively going out and finding links to promote on their site for consumers will continue to make money and want to use CPA networks. The human interface in this instance provides tremendous value to consumers since the publishers truly understand what their market wants.

2) Newsletters. This will become the standard for email marketing as the more aggressive forms of email marketing will be made illegal. This is similar to coupon and affiliate sites where publishers will actively seek out links to target their audience due to their understanding of their market.

3) Web and chat spam is going to increase. Right now we’re seeing quite a bit of spam on myspace, and given the progress people are making on defeating CAPTCHA mechanisms, this will only increase. If the postings cannot be effectively blocked by computers, then more of it will be done. Unfortunately CPA networks will see more volume from various forms of aggressive webspam as time goes on.

The branding industry will have some impact on these, but it likely won’t change much from the way it is now – some inventory will be sold at higher ECPM’s for major brands, and the rest will be remnant inventory. Of course the big question is how high the ECPM’s can get for behavioural targeting and whether they can beat branded advertising.

Some people will read this article and be thinking to themselves "no, he’s wrong, this has always worked, and it will continue to work". The reality is that the internet marketing industry has been around for a very short time, and we really don’t have any data points to compare against long term. The right way to think about it is "where is the true value for consumers and advertisers". If your business model doesn’t provide true value to all stakeholders, then at some point what you are doing will stop working.

If your business model depends entirely on brokering, you may want to consider how you will operate in a few years time once the above become reality.

A good way to think about whether your business will be around in the future is simply by answering two questions:

1) By running my business, am I creating true value for all my stakeholders (customers, employees, consumers, partners)

And

2) Am I keeping up with the very latest trends that might affect my business, including industries that are not directly related to my daily focus?

For number 2, you can say you’re doing the right thing because you’re reading this. J

Does this mean that all CPA advertising and lead generation will go away? Of course not. These are very fundamental models and the backbone of internet commerce.

Just watch out if your business model is entirely focused around brokering remnant advertising. If this is your primary business, make sure you stay on top of your strategy. You don’t want your company to be made irrelevant like has happened with generations of blue collar workers in the past.

IAB: Here's How to Measure Lead Quality

The Interactive Advertising Bureau, with the help of online marketers and ad networks, has laid out guidelines to help members determining the quality of online leads, reports ClickZ. The guidelines come in a new document titled "The Marketer and Agency Guide to Lead Quality" and are meant for those using the web for sales lead generation. The IAB is hoping to make it easier for marketers weighing ad buys and other decisions to determine the best placement for their dollars.
By providing a map of sorts for determining the quality of the leads, including weighing factors such as origin and exclusivity, the IAB hopes that members can increase the return on their ad spending.
Although most leads are validated by third parties, the IAB stresses the importance of manual verification of the data provided. Spending on lead generation online rose from $347 million in 2005 to $592 million in 2006.

How we doubled our conversions using the Google Web Optimizer

http://www.scrollinondubs.com/category/nerd/
How we doubled our conversions using the Google Web Optimizer
February 22nd, 2007 by sean
If there's one concept you learn this month that has the single greatest potential to improve the profitability of your site, the power of DIY multivariate analysis using the Web Optimizer is it. Let me explain.
What is Multivariate analysis and why should you care?
Multivariate analysis in the context of web sites is the science of changing elements on a page and studying the effect they have on your visitors' behavior. If you have a web site, presumably you already have a goal and your site facilitates a behavior from visitors that contributes towards achieving that goal. There is likely a desired outcome you're seeking on each visit - an action you want that person on the other side of the wire to take such as filling out a contact form or purchasing a product. This desired outcome is known as a conversion.
Improving your conversion ratio even one percent can lead to massive improvements in sales and profitability. This calculator is a simple way to run some what-if scenarios given your current order size, traffic and sales numbers. The easiest way to understand the benefit of improved conversion is to think about it as "miles per gallon" on a vehicle- think how much gas you would save if you doubled the fuel efficiency of your engine? But it's even better with web traffic. If your current cost per acquisition for a customer is $5 per customer given all your fixed design/development/hosting costs and marginal costs like advertising, converting twice as many visitors with zero additional cost can bring your cpa down to around a dollar. This has a dramatic effect on profitability of your operation - the effect on profitability is non-linear especially if you feed the savings back into targeted promotion.
How GWO works
So now that you understand the value of improving conversion, let's talk about how GWO specifically does it. Google Web Optimizer is javascript-based multivariate analysis tool that gives you the ability to test different versions of key pages on your site to determine the winning formula that produces the highest conversion. You set up experiments and GWO will dynamically serve different flavors of the same page randomly to different visitors and record the number of resulting conversions. The empirical data is then presented in a graph like the one below. Provided you have enough traffic to produce significant results, the tool reveals the winning combination along with the confidence level of the suggestion (ie. the statistical significance).

You can see that Graphic #4 outperformed the others and crushed the original graphic by almost double.
And the winner is…
So this is all nice in theory but let's take a look at a concrete example of how this helped us refine our messaging on the JumpBox site. A week ago I set up GWO on the JumpBox homepage and tested five different versions of the main graphic. Here's the five versions I tested:

Can you guess which one performed the best?

Technology cuts down on Web registrations

By Jon Swartz, USA TODAY 2 hours, 36 minutes ago

SAN FRANCISCO - An emerging technology standard could be the answer to a major headache: It lets consumers use the same user name and password for hundreds of websites that require a sign-in.

OpenID's approach has quickly earned it the support of Microsoft, AOL and thousands of users online.

"It's all about convenience," says Raven Zachary, 33, a technology analyst for The 451 Group. He intends to use the same user name and password for dozens of social-networking and news sites.

Consumers establish an OpenID identifier in the form of a personalized Web address, such as http://jswartz.myopenid.com, at some 50 websites, including www.myopenid.com and www.typekey.com. When they do, one of 30 OpenID providers, including VeriSign and JanRain, is assigned to securely store the user's data.

OpenID users are asked for their personalized Web address whenever they visit one of hundreds of sites that support OpenID. That address is sent to their provider, which then confirms the identifier. The system is not for use on sensitive accounts for financial transactions.

"This is leading us on the path toward one user name and one password," says David Recordon, innovator for advanced products and research at VeriSign, the domain-name registrar.

The idea has resonated with the tech industry after several missteps, including that of Passport, Microsoft's failed attempt at a universal password sign-in.

Microsoft became the latest to throw its support behind the fledgling standard last month. The software giant is supporting OpenID in conjunction with CardSpace, a feature similar to OpenID that is built into the Windows Vista operating system. Symantec also threw its support behind OpenID, as have hundreds of blogging and social-networking sites such as Digg.

As many as 1,200 sites offer some sort of OpenID services, reaching a potential 75 million people worldwide. Those figures could balloon to 15,000 sites and 250 million people this year, says Steve Kveton, CEO of JanRain, which provides ID services on the Internet.

"It's a little surprising," says Brad Fitzpatrick, OpenID's creator and chief architect at Six Apart, a blogging-software company.

To a lesser extent, OpenID is gaining support as a haven from identity theft, which has soared on the Internet.

Identity theft was the No. 1 gripe among consumers who filed complaints with the Federal Trade Commission last year. In 2006, 36% of 674,354 complaints to the FTC were for identity theft, the agency said in a report last month.

"The Internet was built without an identity system, which is incredible in retrospect," says Kim Cameron, chief architect of identity at Microsoft's Connected Systems Division.

"That limits what you can do with it and exposes you to theft, deception and spam."

Cost Per Lead -- Why Stop There?

by Gary Kreissman, Thursday, February 8, 2007
NOT ALL leads are created equal. To illustrate this point, which lead generation program is more appealing? Would you prefer 1,000 anonymous email addresses where you eventually determine only ten to be good prospects? Or would you like one that delivers 100 leads, each of whom is an ideal prospect?

The answer is obvious, but the trick is how to find those 100 prospects without wasting time sorting through thousands of anonymous and irrelevant respondents.

Happily, a new approach to lead generation that focuses on quality, not quantity, is gaining traction among marketers. This approach, called cost per qualified lead, is the inevitable next phase of online marketing, which to date has evolved from cost per impression to cost per click to cost per lead. The benefits of cost- per-qualified-lead programs are significant, including stronger prospect relationships, shorter sales cycles, great sales efficiency and the virtual elimination of click fraud.

Best of all, while it sounds like this cost-per-qualified-lead process would be complicated, it is actually based on a very straightforward exchange of information between marketers and prospects. To find qualified prospects, marketers place ads, typically text-based, that offer high-quality, relevant incentives, such as webinars, white papers or books, that are tied closely to the marketer's business. In exchange for the opportunity to learn more about specific topics, prospects answer a very brief -- but highly focused -- set of qualifying questions at a landing page that is unique to each company, product, service or offer.

While the programs are straightforward, to get the most out of cost per qualified lead programs, marketers should be sure to keep in mind the following six recommendations:

1. Performance matters. As in direct marketing, marketers want to increase the efficiency of reaching and selling their best prospects. Unlike typical direct marketing -- or more generic Web-based marketing efforts -- advertisers should insist on paying only for prospects who match their ideal targeting criteria.

2. Less is more. Qualified lead generation is not about capturing a great number of leads for a one-way sales process. It is about determining the characteristics of those prospects that marketers most want to reach, finding out what information about a product or category motivates them to share information or details about themselves, and then providing them with what they want as the basis for a two-way relationship.

3. Use prospects' profiles in the pitch. How much better would an initial sales call or email be when the conversation starts with knowledge of the prospect's goals for using a product, his or her experience with similar products, budget expectations or overall attitudes to a marketer's brand? Qualified lead generation programs not only get the right prospects, they lay the building blocks for an initial conversation with them.

4. Education is the best incentive. Many marketers drive mass traffic with promotional offers that encourage consumers to respond, whether or not they are interested in the underlying product. Free iPod offers will attract lots of names because an iPod is valuable to everyone, but smart marketers offer what is valuable to their prospects alone. In most cases, this means education first.

5. Find a niche and scratch it. For marketers, perhaps the ultimate promise of the Web is the ability to reach and motivate small groups that can't be efficiently reached through mass media, and then pay only for people who are really interested in what they sell and have the money to pay for it. In fact, for many firms, cost-per-qualified-lead programs may be at their best when used for niche marketing.

6. Test, test and test again. Qualified lead-generation programs can be continually refined by testing the performance of each program element, such as audience targeting, incentives, copy and media outlet. Qualified leads programs become constantly more efficient based upon that experimentation. This laboratory approach puts the marketer and the qualified leads provider on the same page.

As mentioned earlier, it is inevitable that qualified lead generation programs will rapidly increase in popularity, as marketers become both more sophisticated at understanding what makes their prospects tick, and more eager to appeal to those specific motivators. When applied in the right way, incorporating the six elements above, the cost-per-qualified-lead approach will ensure stronger ROI by putting marketers where they have always wanted to be: in front of the right prospects, at the right time, with the right offer.

What Agencies Should Know About Lead Generation

Agency Media Strategies
By Hollis Thomases | January 30, 2007

When I attended ad:tech New York a few months ago, I was struck by the number of exhibitors offering lead-generation buys. Perhaps I shouldn't have been so surprised. The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) lists online lead generation as the fastest growing category in online ad spending. Where there's money to be made, new businesses shall follow. But online lead gen still struggles with reputation, education, and validation issues that make it the perfect topic for me to review.

Lead-Gen Landscape
Most lead-gen players agree that several factors are influencing the industry's maturity: lead quality, inventory and reach, and client expectation and experience. Matt Wise, president and CEO of Q Interactive, points out his company still has to sell lead gen into agencies as opposed to fielding requests from them. "There's a lack of mindshare when it comes to agencies and lead gen." Advertisers already participating in lead gen include pharmaceuticals, higher education, and financial services, but lead-gen companies are also seeing more traditional brand advertisers, like consumer packaged goods (CPG) and retailers testing the waters.

Why Such Rapid Growth?
Lead generation minimizes an advertiser's risk while developing a means by which the advertisers can remarket to known consumers. Effective lead gen provides accountability, controls costs, and generates measurable ROI (define), all things advertisers want. Jere Doyle, president and CEO of Prospectiv, believes "consumers embrace lead gen because it puts them more in control of how or to what they're being marketed." To even complete a form, the consumer has to be engaged and interested enough to alert the marketer that she wants more information. What advertiser wouldn't want that primed pump?

Agency Lead-Gen Strategy
Agencies must first become educated about lead gen. Learn best practices; what questions to ask when qualifying a vendor and how to protect the advertiser's acquired data; how to best represent the brand and generate a quality lead, and to create a solid plan to use the lead once it's acquired.

Questions to ask when qualifying a vendor include:
Is the lead acquired through clear, conspicuous consumer consent?
Does the consumer think she's signing up for a single inquiry or offer when in fact her data will be shared with other third parties?
If the consumer's data is resold, is that clearly stated?
Are consumers offered an incentive to sign up for the lead?
Is there at least double opt-in permission given by the consumer?
Who owns the consumer's data?
How is the data validated?
Have you worked with any clients similar to ours?
What kinds of targeting options are there?
What kind of feedback loop exists?
What happens if fraudulent leads are provided?
What kind of reporting or data-transfer options exist?
Does the provider have a skilled creative staff and statistician in-house?
So as not to frustrate the user and discourage the lead, Michael Weinsoff, president and CEO of Internet Advertising Group, advises seeking a proper balance between posing too many questions and qualifying a lead.

Common Confusions, Misconceptions, and Pitfalls
A common point of confusion lies in the differentiation between lead gen and co-registration. To some, co-reg means signing up for multiple offers at one time, perhaps with just an e-mail address, rather than giving consent for one offer at a time by answering a few qualifying questions. To others, lead gen merely involves filling out a form with specific questions.

Misconceptions abound: Lead gen equals low-quality marketing. Lead gen is only for direct response marketers. You can't get granularity or predictability with lead gen.

Q Interactive finds the converse true: of its top 100 advertisers in 2006, it had 100 percent renewal. In fact, says Wise, "once an advertiser gets in on lead gen, they don't want to talk about it because they don't want their competitors to know."

Avoid the pitfall of expecting all leads to convert; a poor follow-up plan or slow reaction by sales teams can lead to unsuccessful campaigns.

Untapped Opportunities
Most everyone believes business-to-business (B2B) lead gen has yet to gain momentum. Allan Levy, president and CEO of SilverCarrot, is just waiting for demand to pick up. Prospectiv's Doyle says, "There is a lot of talk about the international market [and] lead gen on a local level."

Lead gen has great potential to be part of the media mix, but agencies must develop specific lead-gen strategy and not try to wedge it into a typical display-oriented buy.

5 Questions to Ask Your Online Lead Generation Provider

by Matt Wise, Thursday, Jan 25, 2007 10:20 AM ET
WITH A REPORTED 71% JUMP in year-over-year revenue, the explosive growth of lead generation means it's one of the hottest sectors in online advertising in 2006. As major brands continue to enter the market in 2007, it's vital to be able to distinguish between top providers who will deliver a quality program -- and lower quality players who will waste time and marketing dollars (and seem to be sprouting up faster than mushrooms after a fall rain these days). To aid in this effort, I've assembled five imperative questions to ask your current or potential provider -- and the answers you need to hear.

1) What do you do to ensure you're targeting the right consumer? If a provider tells you the company contextually places your offer on great sites in its network, that's the wrong answer. Contextual targeting is a novice technology that is inherently flawed since there is never 100% overlap between your target and a site's audience. With the proper targeting, a quality lead can be found on any site. The best targeting methods incorporate your conversion data into a custom "best customer" model that is continually adjusted according to the offer's performance on the backend. Avoid providers that won't accept or are incapable of building a targeting model off your conversion data.

2) Do I have complete ownership of the consumer data? Most marketers should retain 100% ownership of the consumer data. Providers who practice data skimming -- reselling your lead's personally identifiable information -- pose a serious risk of compromising your trusted relationship with the consumer. They're also subsidizing their business with the premium fees you're paying. (For some industries such as mortgage services, "shared leads" sold to four to five companies are the norm. With this model, however, you should pay a significantly lower rate.)

3) Is clear, conspicuous consent required for consumers to opt in? Confirmed consent, whereby the consumer gives clear, conspicuous consent to opt-in to your list, is a crucial component of ensuring quality leads. The key is making certain the consumer is informed of the exact information he is sharing with your company with the express purpose of being contacted by you. Covert consent, where the consumer is automatically added to your list and permission is buried in the terms and conditions policy, will deliver high-volume but low-quality leads. Also note: Your offer should always be optional, and not a requirement for the consumer to complete participation on the host site or receive an incentive.

4) What are your data validation practices? Leads are worthless if you can't contact them. Validating every data field is therefore an absolute must for any campaign. At minimum, providers should offer physical address, e-mail address and phone number validation as well as a fraudulent name filter to catch profanity and bogus names. Among many other key services to look for are credit card validation and available fund pre-authorization, and offer scrubbing to automatically exclude leads who incorrectly answer key qualifying questions in your offer form.

5) How will you ensure my creative is optimized for the highest response? Ongoing creative testing is essential to continually improve volume and quality, even if it's a simple A/B test. Providers should have an experienced, full-service creative team to design, test and optimize your offer for the medium-- and not just repurpose your standard creative.

And as a sixth and final thought, remember that old leads are bad leads. If the provider doesn't offer real-time data delivery, keep looking.
Matt Wise is President and CEO of Q Interactive. Reach him at mwise@qinteractive.com.