The IABEurope search task force continues to grow

I am pleased to discover that I have increased membership substantially, there are nearly three times the number of members to the IABEurope search task force now, I am very pleased. More importantly the membership is starting to reflect the industry and has given me te opportunity to have a dialogue with some of my competitors which otherwise I probably never would have.

So in a sense and perhaps for my own selfish reasons the IAB is proving to be a great place for me and truly allowing the 'trade' to talk. It is a revelation to me that the channel exists. It provides a level playing field where you know that everyone else is capable of presenting an opinion and making sense of what is being said. In this way I feel that genuine progress is possible for the industry - as some would say it is all part of growing up.

However, the industry is still a child. The child is about 10 years old, and that is about how long I have been working in it. Our child has grown rapidly and in some ways recklessly. It is young and it has a lot of money to spend. It is interesting to think back on all the products, strategies and business models that have come about, I cannot profess to know them all, but I have seen many. What is more interesting is how the 'panacea' products never have been, how the 'too good to believe' services have withered and died and how, even as early as 5 the industry was talking about ethical optimisation. Although that was always a stance of my company, Weboptimiser Media Ltd.

Nowadays we are busier than ever, we have a few more things in play, about 8 projects in mobile, a range of coded seo services that range from content management systems to network management, very fast microsite creation and competitive analysis services, we work in email, display, affiliate marketing... all of which add up to a broad range of clients and a broad range of services.

The IAB Europe search task force is about to deliver on its first remit item with its first set of case studies and I am pleased to see that I am not the only provider of those as I have seen a further 8 case studies come through from Latitude. It is possible if every member country of IAB Europe posted just two case studies, then we could get the dizzy heights of 54 case studies. That would be far out. Just think what would happen if all the search marketing companies around the world pooled their case studies how big the repository would be and how convincing to people that the industry is genuine and accessible.