The Performance Marketing Alliance is a new professional affiliate marketing association that is currently in the research and formation stage. This long needed organization will be dedicated to bringing visibility and credibility to the performance marketing industry. The organizers have talked with over 40 industry leaders over the past few weeks to determine if there was an interest in forming a professional association. The responses were unanimously YES!

There has been talk about starting an industry association over the years and numerous false starts have been made. The problem IMHO is that no one was willing or able to put in the money, time and resources to get the organization started. That’s changed now that Anik Singal has taken it upon himself to finance the launch. The formation phase is being sponsored by Affiliate Classroom and spearheaded by Rebecca Madigan who was hired by Anik to work full-time on getting all the groundwork done that it takes to start and professional association. Prior to joining Affiliate Classroom, Rebecca was director of product management and solutions marketing manager at CJ. Rebecca just emailed me:

“We have a lot to do yet to get this started. There is a fine balance between gathering enough input and support from the industry, and getting traction by taking action. While we continue to solicit feedback from a broad base of performance marketing professionals, we’re also moving forward with the nomination of a formation advisory board, and a call for volunteers for working groups who will develop organizational and policy recommendations that the advisory board will approve.

To communicate our efforts and track our progress, we’ve started a website at performancemarketingalliance.com. There are links to interest surveys on this site, so please forward this URL on to all your performance marketing friends and colleagues. We will need the support of as much of the affiliate community as we can muster, and we’ll be successful by meeting the needs of the industry and individual members.

Thanks to those who have already contributed their thoughts and ideas, and I hope we can count on your help and support.

There is an interest survey for affiliates, one for merchants and another survey for Agencies, Consultants, Networks, and Solutions Providers. Make your voice heard and let them know what you want out of the Performance Marketing Alliance. This is YOUR association!

Here is information about some of the industry leaders that are driving the launch phase.