ASW10 Session: Oprah, Flogs and FTC: Hot Topics 2010
Session Description: This session un-muddies the murky waters of the FTC’s ever-changing focus, the proliferation of IP-related lawsuits, and the legal ambiguity regarding many forms of Internet-based marketing. The panel consisted of:
- Bennet Kelley, Founder, Internet Law Center
- Pete Wellborn, Managing Member, Wellborn, Wallace, & Woodard, LLC
I did like this session more than the FTC related session I attended at the last affiliate summit. It was put together with the affiliate industry really in mind, though it captured my interest for being not entirely affiliate related.
Bullet Point Review!
- Truth, proof, & fairness – everything we talk about today can be summed up with this.
- Misleading – common violations, disclaimers, & disclosures, demonstrations, refund policies, ads directed at children, environmental claims.
- Unfair ads – causes or is likely to cause injury that is:
- substantial AND
- not outweighed by other benefits AND
- not reasonably avoidable
- Who is liable?
- Seller (manufacturer or provider)
- Ad Agencies
- Site Designers
- Affiliates
- Individuals (personally involved)
- “Negligence Standard” – knew or should have known that the ad included false or deceptive claims.
- Exert as much control over people as you possibly can because you don’t want to find yourself peripherally liable.
- Other FTC Enforced Laws
- Franchise & Business Opp Rule
- MLM Pyramid Scheme Rules Laws
- Truth in Lending Act
- Fair Credit Billing Act
- Fair Credit Reporting Act
- Equal Credit
- 900 #s
- Rules of Thumb
- Truth
- Consumer point-of-view
- Proof
- Careful: disclaimers/disclosures – rules have dramatically changed.
- Careful: endorsement claims
- Testimonials & Endorsements
- Celebrities
- 1st – Accurate
- 2nd – With Permission (“right of publicity”)
- General Considerations
- Honest opinion/belief of endorser
- Same claim-standard as seller
- Endorsers must continue in belief
- Statements must be presented in context
- Consumer Endorsements
- You cannot get away with “results not typical” anymore.
- Claims must be representative
- Claims must be substantial
- or Claims can be disclaimed (MAYBE)
- Same claim-standard as seller
- “Actual Consumer” must be just that
- Expert Endorsements
- Must be true
- Must be a real expert in the correct field
- Organization Endorsements
- True collective judgment opinion
- Must be true “expert” opinion
- Material Connections
- This is where the FTC is trying to go after the “mommy blogger” crowd
- Connection between endorser and seller that might materially affect the weight or credibility of the endorsement must be fully disclosed (very gray area in terms of HOW)
- Rule often applies where endorser is not celebrity or well-known expert
- “Connection” may be money or publicity
- Applies to blogs & flogs (fake blogs)
- Walmarting Across America was a fake blog made by Walmart to generate publicity.
- Absolutely forbidden by the rules of the FTC
- They don’t want to have a chilling effect on guerilla or creative marketing campaigns, but at some point it has to be disclosed that it’s marketing or advertising.
- Celebrities
- “Free” Stuff
- “Free” means free
- “Regular price” means same price, on the same quality, quantity, and service level at which the seller has sold the product in that geographic market or trade area for a reasonable substantial period of time
- Ad must be clean
Points brought up during the Q&A
In the context of an agency, how can you transfer liability of claims to the client?
- Have a bullet proof contract
- Make sure your agreement has a provision that you’ll periodically monitor any celebrity or expert endorsements to ensure accuracy
They read through the presentation rather fast so my notes are probably incomplete. Luckily, the presentation was made available! I had to leave during the Q&A portion to get back to the booth, so I probably missed some good stuff caught on video, so I’ll add that here in the next few weeks. Here’s the presentation:
ASW10 Session: Product Datafeeds: The Next Level
Session Description: Product datafeeds are among the most powerful tools available to affiliate marketers. We’ll discuss the current state of datafeeds and industry progress, best practices, and moving toward standards. The panel consisted of:
- Scott Jangro, President, Mech Media Inc. (Moderator)
- Larry Adams, Product Manager, Google
- Shergul Arshad, VP Business & Corporate Development, StyleFeeder, Inc.
- Brian Smith, CEO & Founder, SingleFeed
The panel was really well organized. Scott asked questions and then each panelist answered. I did my best to note the questions Scott asked and who each answer came from.
Bullet Point Review!
- Have you seen innovation in datafeeds?
- Larry: Haven’t seen a lot of innovation on the advertiser side, but have seen innovation from publishers. Deriving interesting information from feeds to actually provide some value. Taking this huge library & simplifying it. GAN is trying to figure out how to make the data more accessible & easier to consume. Easier for the publisher to get what they want out of it. The networks’ role is to be a facilitator. They push advertisers to get highest quality data and make sure as many publishers who want the data can access it.
- Shergul: 30% of the datafeeds they work with are truly excellent, 40% just acceptable, and the rest they have to mess with. 30% aren’t in the right format, and not just smaller programs but some are from big retailers. They’re on a campaign to try to help improve this and they reach out to the merchants. Sometimes merchants need to be shown what they’re missing by not providing accurate data. It’s easier for people to take advantage of open source tools to innovate so more people want to access datafeeds to automate sites. It’s hard to envision a one-size-fits-all datafeed.
- Brian: Not much has changed, but in the last 18 months datafeeds have become more complex. More attributes are being asked for from the merchants. That’s a good, positive sign. It does kind of screw things up for merchants trying to format new feeds in different formats. Merchants are starting to recognize datafeeds are great, and they’re looking for the next great channel. NOw they’re being forced to deal with datafeeds.
- There’s been more development of product APIs instead of downloading text files. Is API going to take over datafeeds?
- Shergul: API are more accessible when you’re pulling in fewer feeds. Using thousands of datafeeds just isn’t scalable. There’s a place for coexisting, but in general for speed and size constraints, they can’t shift towards APIs.
- Brian: Some publishers don’t know how to use APIs, so it’s going to take awhile for publishers to move over there and mostly they’ll coexist for awhile.
- Larry: The nice thing about an API is the data is fresher. GAN integrated with Google Base because they have a nice API. Working to provide more keyword targeted ads.
- Scott: Data has never been more accessibly and most networks now offer free access.
- If someone is just starting out, how should they start?
- Larry: Start small. Deal with usefullness before scale. Find out who has the best feeds and start easy. Figure out how you’re going to use them & then you can figure out ways to imprve the bad data or ignore it until the advertiser provices high quality fdata. Literally tens of millions of products are available to you. You don’t need every single product on your site to have a good user experience. There’s a fine line between copying and searching for inspiration. Don’t do what your competitors are doing – but shop there and find what you like and dislike in the shoes of a consumer and improve upon that.
- Shergul: It depends on what your site does. It’s manageable to access the “right” 20 datafeeds to be comprehensive in your vertical. Too man products can get too big and too overwhelming too quickly.
- Brian: Go after high quality. You might as well start with APIs and they have a wealth of information you can access. Make some calls & learn more about them. Start from there. Look at the big guys pushing great data – Amazon, eBay, Shopping.com.
- What are the major hurdles in getting “good datafeeds” to a higher number?
- Larry: That’s more of a merchant problem than a network issue.
- Brian: The networks need to sell datafeeds better. Case studies will work.
- Is there hope for standardization? Can we? What does it really mean?
- Larry: The first thing that comes to mind is categories. Building a common taxonomy that works for millions of products and thousands of merchants.
Points brought up during the Q&A
- Shergul: Positive examples of great datafeeds and data quality: Nordstrom, Shoe Buy, Target, CSN Stores.
- Larry: It can seem like a daunting task to improve a feed, but start small with one category to see if there’s a payoff on the work you’ve put in. Then you can more easily convince your boss it’s worth the time.
- If you have duplicate products, would you suggest changing the descriptions to avoid dupe content?
- Use your own analytics to pick the best product and dump the other one; there are enough products that you don’t need to worry about using both.
I hope I got comprehensive notes. I was trying my best to pay very close attention, but I have to admit that I got lost in some parts. By nature, it’s a dry subject, and though the presenters were doing their best to keep it lively, that early of a time slot might have not been the best. Here’s the presentation:
ASE09: Monday Chris Brogan Keynote (Trisha’s Take)
Despite more and more sessions being on Sunday of the conference, I think most people still consider the official start of the show to be the Monday keynote. This year the event added a second keynote on Tuesday, which Dominic and I have already posted our thoughts on. It’s just taken me awhile to formulate my thoughts for the Monday keynote! The keynote address was given by:
- Chris Brogan, President, New Marketing Labs (Twitter @chrisbrogan)
- Julien Smith, co-author of Trust Agents (Twitter @julien)
Chris actually teamed up with his co-author of Trust Agents, Julien Smith. I’ve heard a lot about Julien through Chris’ blog and twitter, and it was nice to put a face to a name and hear him talk as well. Overall I really liked the message that Chris and Julie gave out: remember social currency can get you farther than monetary currency sometimes. Chris asked that the audience resist the urge to tweet the keynote as they talked as a social experiment. I don’t know how it worked out, but I think most people were true to the experiment and did not tweet through it!
Bullet Point Review!
- To be a trust agent:
- make your own game – standing out
- one of us – belonging
- Archimedes effect – leverage
- agent zero – developing access
- human artist – developing understanding
- building an army – developing mass
- You’re competing with literally everything else in the world for attention.
- There are three levels of attention:
- Awareness
- Reputation
- Trust
- In a lot of ways, network marketing is cold calling.
- Trust equations:
- Trust = Social Capital
- Social Capital + Web = Links
- Social Capital + Web =Traffic
- Social Capital + Web =Social Proof
- Social Capital + Web =A big f’n network
- Understand there are other currencies than cash – that’s the secret of the game.
- Make Your Own Game
- Find your value differentiation.
- Create a new word for yourself.
- Learn the systems – attuned/distorted.
- One of Us
- Find the agent zero.
- Seek frictionless distribution.
- Be everywhere and create/maintain bonds.
- All knowledge is vocabulary.
- Insider language is huge.
- Archimedes’ Effect
- Be the priest, build the church.
- Be the relationship before the sale.
- You live or die by your database.
- Be part of everyone’s 150
- Human Artist
- Connect people constantly.
- Share instead of hoard.
- Practice simple touch points of loyalty.
- Self aware vs. Self involved.
- Build an Army
- Give your ideas handles.
- Teach them to fish.
- Bring your own dial tone.
- Be the elbow of every deal.
- Be human at a distance.
- Sometimes people on top forget they’re normal people too.
All in all I think more companies need to remember that there’s a human element to business. Sometimes karma is the best reason to do things. Here’s the presentation:
ASE09 Session: Keeping Your Affiliate Program Clean
Guest Post by Dominic Fawver.
Session Description: Learn advanced approaches to running a clean affiliate program. A review of the systems, processes, tools and techniques used by leading affiliate programs to keep their programs clean. The panel consisted of:
- David Naffziger, CEO, BrandVerity (Moderator)
- Jamie Birch, Owner, JEBCommerce (Twitter @JamieEBirch)
- Graham MacRobie, President & CEO, Alias Encore (Twitter @grahammacrobie)
- Joshua Sloan, CEO, Sloan Tech (Twitter @sloanzone)
This session contained a lot of useful information targeted mostly to companies with an affiliate program and also outsource program managers. Some of the information was useful for affiliates, especially the need for a good relationship between affiliates and affiliate managers. The session consisted of short presentations by David Naffziger and by Graham MacRobie and then the floor was opened up for questions.
The presentations gave a brief overview of some of the common forms of abuse affiliate programs need to avoid. These include PPC violations, Cookie Stuffing, Legitimate link replacement, transaction lead fraud, and Brand Squatting. Some of the ways given to combat abuse were to know how your partners work – know how traffic is normally sent, who else they work with, is their plan consistent with their performance, and is their traffic pattern different from the normal. Examples of various software was give, a couple from Brand Verity and also free alternatives.
The question and answer portion gave several very good tips. One of the first was that no program should auto-approve, that affiliates each be inspected to make sure that they are who they say they are. Another was to go over the terms and conditions listed for the program at least once a year; it is better to have over strict rules and regs. that are lightly enforced rather than not enough. This will help in the long run because if abuse is found it can then be removed. Less than desirable affiliates are likely to group in the smaller networks as they are less likely to be discovered. More abuse is likely in a new affiliate program. Having the highest payout can make you a target on account of greed. Many of these comments can be used both by affiliate managers and also act as warnings to affiliates as to the relationship they should have with their manager.
Read MoreASE09 Meet Market Observations
Guest Post by Dominic Fawver.
During Affiliate Summit I visited both the Meet Market and the exposition hall to see the booths. I was impressed at how good some of the booths and tables were, and also at how bad some were. If I could recognize they were bad as a first time attendee, they must have stood out to veterans. Here are some general comments based upon my experiences.
- Have a banner behind the table, giving your name and hopefully an idea of what you are (network, merchant, etc.)
- Have a give away: this is something that will make people remember you later. It is even better if it ties in with your company name, slogan, or something of that nature. It never hurts to be unique.
- Have people at the booth (I would have assumed that was obvious).
- Be friendly (again, obvious).
- Don’t have several people working the crowd and handing out stuff (I got asked if I wanted Perfect English at least 10 times) and no one at the table.
- If you have a giveaway or are doing a contest make sure to enter people that come up in it. If there is a scanner make sure that all of the people working the booth know how to use it.
- Make sure that you are not crowding into the booth next to you.
- If your giveaway is beer make sure there is plenty of room for people (very good attention getter in my opinion, but a zoo if not handled right).
I would have thought most of these would be completely obvious, but I saw multiple examples of each. Companies are paying for these tables, so the focus should be optimizing the experience to bring in business, not turn it away. I was really impressed with adCanadian and how every little detail of their table tied into company branding – their banner, the sticker, the giveaway, their jersey – and they were really nice guys to boot (eh!). They created a positive, lasting impression, which is what you should be doing when representing the company at any conference or industry event. Keep these tips in mind when planning your own Meet Market table or booth for future conferences!
Read MoreASE09: Tuesday Peter Shankman Keynote (Dominic’s Take)
Guest Post by Dominic Fawver.
I see that Trisha has already given a really good outline of the topics covered by Peter, so I will just briefly mention a few things that I got out of it.
This was one of the most entertaining, insightful, and inspirational speeches given at the Summit. I really enjoyed how Peter was able to engage the entire audience by using current examples mixed in with examples from his own experience. One of his key points was that you can not make something go viral; you can make something good, and if people like it, it will go viral. This keynote (along with all that I learned at Affiliate Summit) has given me the inspiration to continue on with a couple of projects I had been thinking of for a while.
That’s the mark of a good keynote.
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