You may have heard that the IAB and DMA have got together to create the first charter aimed at search marketing agencies. They hope to establish best practice for the industry. At Spannerworks we think it is about time that something like this is in place and welcome the compliance.
Striking the right balance can often determine the success of such charters. As a first step, the IAB and DMA seemed to have come in at the right level. The charter isn’t too detailed and criteria for compliance not too tough so it should be successful in gaining support from the search engines and industry.
I certainly hope that this will help make it easier for people to manage their search campaigns and report things like click fraud and trademarking issues. The only area there is likely to be hot debate around is search engine optimisation. While we don’t support the link-buying, it is normal practice for some markets so acceptance of certain codes of best practice may not be as straight forward.
On the whole, this move aligns the search marketing industry with standards accepted in other forms of marketing and can only help the industry progress as it should.
