I saw this story come across my inbox today and I had to chuckle. Two of us from DoublePositive spent the last 2 days locked in a room with many of the biggest mortgage lead generators, leab buyers, and service providers that touch the mortgage leads industry. The Leads2007 Conference was a great meeting and we talked about many important issues facing the mortgage leads industry — arguably the largest and most mature online lead generation category.

We’re not an “association” per se, we’re just a bunch of companies and individuals concerned with sharing true best practices. We talked about how there have been a couple of failed attempts at organizing lead generators in the past, such as the Internet Advertising Bureau’s Lead Generation Committee and the Online Lead Generation Association. Neither of these associations seems to be creating much noise (the last OLGA blog post was over a year ago).

But today the IAB released this report on Lead Generation Data Transfer Best Practices. The report proposes a standard on the transfer and receipt of data between advertisers and lead generation service providers. Ok…. I guess we need that. Standards are good.

But while the IAB is talking about things like SSL encryption and  XML schemas, we spent the last two days talking about things that will really help the industry — things like improving the consumer experience, lead buying practices, sales approaches, and innovations in lead generation. 

Yeah… Leads2007 rocked! XML schemas… not so much.