Wednesday, January 23, 2013

Get Ready for the Wave of new GTLD Advertisers!

DomainReport.ca

They are coming.

We have seen a few gtlds (global top level domains), or country code domain extensions marketed like gtlds, launch in the last few years.  Extensions like .co, .me, .xxx, and .mobi come to mind.  Starting around mid-2013, there will be dozens or hundreds more going live.

Whenever a new gtld has launched, it has brought with it a lot of debate and discussion on how it will fair, what keywords are the best to register, and even some early sales data in the aftermarket.  Some of this has already started with the new gtlds.  But they also bring something else...

Advertising dollars.

When a new gtld gets released, the registry usually partners with one or more registrars to promote the gtld extension, and you see their ads on many domaining blogs among other places (tv, magazines, ppc ads, etc.).  When you have dozens to hundreds of gtlds all releasing around the same time, how will they all be promoting themselves?  How will each stand out in the crowd of gtlds?

I'd say if you run a high traffic blog related to domains or domaining, or online marketing, or a domain forum, be prepared for an onslaught of advertising offers.  Remember when .xxx launched?  Their ads were often seen on blogs, and they even did some tv commercials.  What happens when 50 or 100 .xxx's launch at around the same time?  Some may stay low profile, but I'd bet that some of the popular ones will want to get high profile fast, and try to take on the legacy extensions.  I don't know how the new gtlds will do, but I do expect to see a lot of promotion going on in the first few months.

One sure exception to this - .gay has already noted that they aren't looking for domainer type investors, they are looking to build organically through developers as reported in The Domains blog here.  Fair enough, you probably won't see any .gay ads on domain blogs I'm guessing.

But many other gtlds will probably welcome some amount of domainer investing in order to bring in some revenues early on.  It has been a long road to the new gtlds, and there are fees and expenses that each applicant will need to recover.

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2 comments:

  1. Do you think there is any value in the domain name GTLDAdvertising.com?

    ReplyDelete
  2. The best way to predict the future is to research the past :-( If these new GTLD folks follow the same system proven to not produce desired results well then ... you can predict the outcome for each like predicting water falling in the rain. If on the other hand they get creative in their marketing advertising attempts then who knows what new marketing systems that actually produce results may come out of it. Here's to hoping that the new players do it different. If so we may soon witnessing the beginning of a new era for the domain industry. Otherwise jump in get a blog take their money and wait for the next dot then lather rinse repeat until all the dots and the money flow disappers.

    ReplyDelete

Thank you!