Global market research and consulting firm Millward Brown and the Financial Times published the second annual BRANDZ top 100 ranking of the most valuable brands today. Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) is number one with a brand value of $66,434 million. This is followed by General Electric ($61,880 million; NYSE: GE), Microsoft ($54,951 million; NASDAQ: MSFT) and Coca-Cola ($44,134 million; NYSE: KO).
Link: Press Release (PDF)
Public Interest Registry (PIR), which runs .org, and Afilias Ltd., the operator of the .info extension, announced that they will increase the domain registration fees for these two TLDs in mid-October.
Prices will go up 2.5 percent. The latest contract between the two registries and ICANN allows a maximum price increase of 10 percent per year. Both PIR and Afilias chose to increase prices by $0.15 to $6.15 in 2007.
PIR will increase the .org registration on October 18th, .info prices will go up on October 15th.
Typosquatting, the practice of registering misspellings of trademarked brands in order to earn money from the typo traffic, has become a relatively big problem, especially since domain tasting got so popular.
California-based venture CitizenHawk launched a new product called “TypoSquasher” that should make it possible for TM owners to find misspellings of their trademarks and domain names.
The service worked quite good when I used the demo version on their homepage. It shows possible TM infringing typo domains and where they are parked.
According to a press release, online retailer Overstock.com, Inc. is one of CitizenHawk’s first customers. “Using TypoSquasher, we’ve already identified and removed affiliates from our program who were infringing on derivations of our brand URLs,†said Jake Bailey, affiliate program manager at Overstock.com. “Before utilizing this service, we had to find all the infringements on our own. TypoSquasher is the only solution that allows us to discover and deal with our ‘fat finger URLs’ in one place.”
The TypoSquasher service is definitely a useful tool for TM owners to protect their brands. But one must be careful that the public does not get a wrong impression of the domain industry and domain investors, because it is still a widely spread misunderstanding that all domain portfolio owners earning money from domain parking are cybersquatters. They are not. Only domain registrants owning domain names infringing on other companies’ trademarks are cybersquatters or typosquatters.
Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) announced it will acquire online advertising network DoubleClick Inc. for $3.1 billion. The purchase will strengthen Google’s position in the Internet advertising market. It is also the biggest purchase in Google’s history, happening six months after the $1.65 billion YouTube deal.
Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT) was involved in the bidding too, but they backed out after the auction price was higher than $2 billion.
With its more than 1,500 corporate clients, DoubleClick should help Google expand into the markets of print, radio and TV advertising and it should help provide better ad targeting.
The Daily Domainer reports that Microsoft Russia purchased the domain name MSN.ru. The price has not been disclosed, but rumor has it that Microsoft might have paid as much as $1 million for it. The domain, which was originally registered by Roman Elkhadjiev in 2000, was put up for sale in June 2006. Mr. Elkhadjev had received a $350,000 offer before the domain was sold, but the deal did not go through at that time. The rumored $1,000,000 sale price is not far-fetched. In fact, other companies have also spent so much money on acquiring their company name ccTLDs (e.g. Google.cn and Google.com.cn were bought by Google for $1 million).
You see, domain sale prices are steadily going up and large corporations are entering the domain market to complete their portfolios by buying both brand names they failed to register and quality generic domains to support their brands.
This morning I read Rick’s great new blog post about Corporate America having failed not having acquired generic domains for cheap when they had had the chance to do so. The post really got me thinking about corporate buyers and “end users” again. I agree 100% with Rick on everything he wrote in that post. Personally, I would buy every generic traffic domain that came across my way if I had the funds available, and I’m sure most of you domainers would do the same thing. The question is, what do we see that Madison Avenue and Corporate America do not see? What is it that they “do not get”, as Rick puts it?
They simply relied on their established brands and failed to recognize the great opportunity the Internet and domain names presented to them to increase sales. They failed to see how powerful a domain name really is and that smaller companies would use domains to launch new brands, become large too and maybe even overtake the then big players.
Rob Sequin has compiled an extensive list of corporations that own generic domains and have promoted them in marketing campaigns. Take a look at that list and you will see the winners of tomorrow. You will see companies who got it and now have a great advantage over their competition, because they own quality domains with direct navigation traffic. They decided to spend between $1,000 and seven figures per domain, but rest assured that it’s been money well spent.
Even today most executives would prefer spending $1 million on a marketing campaign instead of paying the same amount of money for a generic .com domain name. Do you see the difference between the two investments? The marketing campaign is very limited in both time and reach. The domain name, on the other hand, belongs to its owner forever and it is available all over the world.
TV ads, for example, are only broadcast in a specific region and you do not really get much screen time for $1M, but if you own a domain you can use it to advertise your products and services to an international audience and there are only very few limits. You can use the domain to support your brand or build entire new brands. That is what Madison Avenue is trying to do, isn’t it?
Another example, companies often pay several dollars for just one click on a pay-per-click search ad. That’s $1 or more for just one visitor, for just one potential client! If you compare this to a domain that gets 100 unique type-ins every day, you would have to spend $100 on PPC ads per day to get the same number of visitors. The domain might only cost $10,000 or $100,000. That’s 100 to 1,000 days worth of PPC ads. The difference is, the PPC ad will not bring you any more visitors after that amount of money is spent, but the domain will continue to drive targeted and well-converting traffic to your site forever! Even better, type-in traffic has been increasing over the years and it will increase in the future too. So a domain which gets 100 unique visitors today might get 200 visitors next year and even more in five or ten years. For instance, Rick Schwartz’s domain widgets.com received 60 daily visitors in 2006… Today, more than 250 people visit the domain every day by typing it directly into their web browsers.
“Targeted traffic” is another important keyword worth talking about. Type-in traffic is more targeted and converting better than traffic from search engines and PPC links. Therefore, 100 type-ins from a generic domain are often worth more than 100 visits from a paid link.
After all, why does Corporate America spend billions of dollars on advertising and cannot afford to use a relatively small part of their budget to purchase a good domain name? Why spend X for Y when a domain can bring you more Y for less X?
Fortunately, the message is slowly getting through. The number of end user domain sales is increasing and Wall Street investors have entered the domain space. But we are still far away from the point at which businesses and executives fully understand the potential of a domain name and what a great advantage it is to own a generic domain. So far it has been the domain owners who have tried to start a dialogue. It has been domain owners who invited Wall Street and Madison Ave to learn about domains at the TRAFFIC domain conferences. Now let’s wait and see how long it takes for the corporations to finally “get it”. Time is on the domainers’ side. The value of domains is going nowhere but up.
Yahoo has announced that they will require advertisers to provide a shorter 70-character description for all PPC ads as of May. The current 190-character descriptions will then be optional and will only be used in certain ad formats. In June, Yahoo will then begin cutting off ads at 70 characters. The maximum length of ad titles will remain 40 characters, but display URLs will be reduced to a maximum of 35 characters.
Ron Jackson wrote an excellent cover story about Demand Media’s Richard Rosenblatt, who helped sell MySpace.com to Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. for $580 million, iMall to ExciteAtHome for $565 million and GreatDomains to VeriSign for $100 million. In 2006 Rosenblatt founded Demand Media, Inc., a company which quickly became one of the biggest players in the domain space, owning companies such as domain registrar eNom, eHow and Hillclimb Media and managing the .TV top-level-domain.
Here’s the official press release for Rick Schwartz’s domain blog:
Rick Schwartz Opens Domain Name and Traffic Blog
Rick Schwartz, aka “Domain King” announces RicksBlog.com which he says “is a place that will ruffle some feathers and challenge the staus quo.”
Boca Raton, FL (PRWEB) April 6, 2007 — Rick Schwartz aka “Domain King” has announced the opening of his new blog, http://www.ricksblog.com/. He says “it is a place that will ruffle some feathers and challenge the staus quo.” In Rick’s new blog he will disclose things he has learned over the last 12 years on the net.
Schwartz is a pioneer in the domain name business and is considered largely responsible for igniting the space with his $1.3 million sale of Men.com back in 2003. Since then Rick Schwartz has CO-Founded the T.R.A.F.F.I.C. tradeshow http://www.TargetedTraffic.com which is the premiere tradeshow of the domain channel. The show is by invitation only and some 600 of the “Biggest and the best” attend. Rick is also a “Founding board member” of the Internet Commerce Association http://www.internetcommerce.org/ an association created to protect Domain Owners Rights, and founder of eRealesate.com.
Schwartz says, “Many have yet to understand the lead and customer generating power that a great domain with type in traffic can provide. Imagine an endless supply of qualified customers with no cost other than the cost of acquisition.”
Rick has a knack for predicting big trends and getting it right. He may have been the first to recognize the value of “Type in” traffic which is now commonly referred to as “direct navigation” - the most potent and targeted traffic on the net. Rick has a prime portfolio of one and two word domains, and is considered by many to be among the leading experts on domain names, traffic, website flow and valuation. Besides his active websites Rick owns domains like Candy.com, Properties.com, Tradeshows.com, Cheating.com, ChristmasCarols.com and some 5000 others,
Rick is also an accomplished businessman in several other industries including furniture, lighting and advertising. He ran one of the most profitable and efficient home based businesses with no employees back in the early 1990’s out of a 10 x 10 bedroom. He sold it for over 7 figures freeing his time to devote exclusively to the internet in 1998. It also cemented his main theory that “Domains would go up faster in value than any commodity ever know to mankind.” Laughed at in 1995 and 1996 it is FACT today. No stock, no land, no gold, no jewel has ever gone up faster and further in value. He also sold “PartnerCash.com in July 2006 for $110,000 and then 2 other un-named domains for an additional $180,000 in December that had cost him a whopping $105 for the three names. that were purchased around 1996-1997. In August 2005 he bought Property.com for $750,000 to match up with Properties.com that he bouight in 1998 for $61,000. He has turned down multi million dollar offers in lieu of developing it himself when the time is right.
In the last year Schwartz has purchased cd.com for $275,000, Flowers.mobi for $200,000 and eat.mobi for $6750 along with dozens of other domain buys.
Rick also runs the premiere domain forum on the net in which the top domainers and sponsors in the world are invited to participate and join. His members read like the Who’s who of the domain channel. It is known as the hardest website on the net to get into. While others beg for traffic, Rick and his members screens every applicant before they are accepted. Thus the basis for T.R.A.F.F.I.C. being a tradeshow that is by invitation only. Attendees agree that this is one of the most important features of the show as it guarantees a productive investment of their valuable time as they break bread with the “Biggest and the Best” in a warm and cordial environment.
Schwartz says “My blog will challenge failed mainstream thinking and their lack of understanding that the Internet is the great sales tool ever invented.”
Jay Westerdal from Name Intelligence, Inc. recently had an interview with the former ICANN board member Karl Auerbach. Auerbach told Jay that VeriSign spends only $0.14 to maintain a .com domain. Nevertheless, VeriSign will raise the fee for .com domains by 42 cents per domain, which is three times the actual cost on their side! There is also an interesting graph in the post showing that domain tasting is huge nowadays: only 2.4% of all domain registrations are kept for longer than five days.
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