By Nick Patience
The Direct Marketing Association (DMA) has swallowed another internet trade association, snapping up the Internet Alliance, a Washington DC-based organization that represents the interests of the internet industry, predominantly in the US. The acquisition is a tacit admission that the IA, which used to be called the Interactive Services Association (ISA), just isn’t big or prominent enough to have a significant voice in the world’s power centers as the internet becomes increasingly embroiled in public policy matters. It is also an admission that the industry hasn’t quite got its act together where public policy tracking and lobbying are concerned.
Of course nobody on the call to announce the acquisition would admit as much, but Jeff Richards, executive director of the IA did say that last year’s plans for expansion to Europe, Asia and Australia had to be canned because the IA had to funnel its scarce resources into dealing with around 175 internet bills in Congress and many more in the various states. DMA chief executive Bob Wientzen says the DMA has a significant presence in Europe and is involved in the various internet public policy issues, the most important of which is currently privacy and data transfer (see separate story). The IA for its part, serves as the secretariat for the ad-hoc Online Privacy Alliance (OPA). It also works in the areas of taxation, unsolicited email and content regulation.
Marc Jacobson, IA board chairman and senior VP corporate development and public policy at Prodigy Communications Corp says Vice President Al Gore’s office told him last week that it is currently tracking some 1,500 bills across the US that are related in one way or another to the internet, which gives an idea of the scale of the task facing such trade bodies. He says the IA needs to be in a position to make the internet what it promises to be.
The IA will continue to be run as a separate entity within the much-larger DMA, as is the Association of Interactive Media (AIM), which the DMA acquired last October (10/14/98). Wientzen says the IA is more focused on public policy issues and is dominated by more senior-level executives, whereas AIM is primarily an educational and networking organization. The two organizations first worked together on privacy issues in 1996. They say there is not a lot of overlap between them in terms of membership, with just a few companies, including AT&T Corp, America Online Inc, IBM Corp and Microsoft Corp being among the few that are members of both. The DMA, which was established in 1917, boasts more than 4,500 business members in 54 countries. The IA, which was formed as the ISA in 1982, has about 125 members. It’s not an acquisition in the traditional corporate sense, but the employees will all move over and the various assets, intellectual property and liabilities of the IA will be assumed by the DMA.
