I don’t get Forrester. I mean, they describe themselves as a “market research company that provides pragmatic and forward-thinking advice to global leaders in business and technology.” But then you get a blog post from one of their top marketing analysts that says this:

When I kicked off the research for Forresters 5 -year Interactive Marketing Forecast this past August, I had originally intended to also include affiliate marketing in the projections. I got a great run down on current trends in the space from Steve Denton at Linkshare and John Ardis and Dave Osmon from Commission Junction. However, in the end I ended up cutting affiliate out of the overall sizing…

However, I continue to get a lot of inquiries about affiliate marketing. So, it seems a relevant area to address through some dedicated research. The inquiries I get are often around how to set up an affiliate network, what pricing to expect from vendors, how to manage affiliate marketing alongside other CPC or CPA-types of marketing (like search or behaviorally-targeted ads). But Id love you to help me gauge the interest in this area. What are the primary questions you are asking about affiliate marketing? Is it a hot or cold area for your company? Im crafting my final Q1 research agenda and would like to think about how/whether to include affiliate marketing as a doc topic. Many thanks! (see the full post here).

To me, if I am a company that is all about “forward-thinking advice for global leaders” I would think at some point before the year 2008 they would have produced at least one report focused on affiliate marketing. Actually, scratch that, I would expect that they would have produced some research before the year 2004.

I’ve been on a couple calls with Forrester, and when it comes to online marketing, they always seem to be up to date on the news but a year or more behind the trends. I kind of understand it, since Forrester analysts are researchers, not people actually involved in the online marketing business, but c’mon, just thinking about researching affiliate marketing now? I bet there are a number of Forrester clients who are missing out on millions in revenue because they are waiting for Forrester to validate affiliate marketing as a channel in the online marketing mix (although I could be overestimating Forresters influence).

It makes me wonder why anyone looking for online marketing advice would spend thousands for their service. You can get better information from keeping an eye on Search Engine Land.

End of rant…everyone have a good weekend.

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