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I've been promoting the fact that domain parking companies should become more transparent for quite some time now. The theme of the next TRAFFIC conference is "transparency". The problem facing many parking companies and for all of us is how do we get there?
 A number of years ago in Australia we had a very similar problem with the online advertising industry. The industry didn't have any uniform standards or levels of transparency that gave advertisers confidence in the medium.
As a director of the Internet Industry Association (iia.net.au) I was asked to chair a committee of the major advertising networks (Yahoo, MSN, Google etc) and try and sort the mess out. After an extended period of consultation with all the stakeholders we managed to establish an agreed set of standards that are still being used today. From that point onwards advertising dollars have poured into the online advertising industry as advertisers gained confidence in the medium. This was the outcome that all the stakeholders recognized as the pot of gold at the end of the semi-arduous rainbow.
I would like to now propose a road map that will ultimately lead to greater levels of transparency and legitimize the parking industry in the minds of many advertisers.
You may ask, "What right do I have to suggest this process?" I believe that I have absolutely no right other than seeing that it needs to be done and having had experience in actually doing this before. I'd be very happy if the ICA took this role on but I see them up to their neck in ICANN related issues at the moment.
Below are the steps and a defacto timeline that I believe needs to be gone through in order for the domaining community to ultimately achieve transparency.
Step 1 - Organise the stakeholders
Invite all stakeholders to take part in the process of establishing standards for the parking industry. If you represent a parking company then please let me know if you would like to take part in this first step (click here). It will be in your direct interest to be a part of this process. Only those that agree to be a part of the process can influence decisions regarding the setting of standards etc.
Step 2 - Distribution of draft standards document
Standards must be established for all of the industry metrics (eg. fraudulent traffic, CTR, EPC, RPM, Uniques etc) prior to transparency being established. Without standards transparency will have little meaning. I would like to propose distributing a draft standards document that can been added to and amended by any of the stakeholders until the end of Jan 08.
Step 3 - Meet at TRAFFIC Las Vegas
During TRAFFIC Las Vegas, hold a face-to-face discussion of the proposed standards document and the implications of the standards for the industry.
Step 4 - Further review of standards and technical implications
Electronic discussion of proposed standards document and any technical implications that it may have to existing parking systems.
Step 5 - Meet at TRAFFIC Orlando
During TRAFFIC Orlando, hold the second face-to-face discussion with the goal of ratifying the standards.
Step 6 - Implementation of standards on parking platforms
There will obviously be some technical implementations needed so that the standards are properly adopted and some time will be required for the implementation.
Step 7 - TRAFFIC New York, Announcement of standards
The announcement and implantation of standards for parked domain traffic would be ideally done in New York and involve as many people as possible from Madison Avenue.
Step 8 - Transparency Test
Now that there are standards, parking companies can be measured against the standards so that domainers can be confident in the statistics being provided. I believe that a transparency audit should be conducted by a third party such as PWC or Ernst & Young in conjunction with a domainer. The third party could report to the advertising community while the domainer could report to the domaining community.
The most important thing to appreciate is that each parking company is being measured against the agreed standards and how successfully they are abiding by the standards over time.
Will this process be a challenge? Yes, of course it will but I believe that it will be very beneficial for all those that take part. I think that the industry will go down a standards and transparency path, it's a matter of "when" not "if". The challenge will be for a select group of parking companies to seize the initiative and to get the process started. If you're a person in authority in a parking company and you're interested then let me know by clicking here.
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