(yet big) change in GoDaddy’s ads — A subtle

Verisign paying to include .com in GoDaddy ad.

I was watching the Cardinals game last night when I noticed ads for GoDaddy.com behind the batter.

This is nothing fresh. GoDaddy frequently advertises on baseball broadcasts. But something regarding the ad looked different. Take a look.

Can’t see the difference? Here’s a close-up.

We by now know that GoDaddy is rebranding by dropping .com from its name. But this ad not only drops the .com from the original GoDaddy.com logo – it adds it back as an advertisement supported by Verisign.

Think regarding it. Previously, Verisign got a bit of free marketing from this same exact ad shown during baseball games. It just read “GoDaddy.com”. Now Verisign is paying GoDaddy to include (and highlight) .com on the ads.

That’s a pretty big shift.

Verisign won’t be the only firm paying for promotion like this going forward. A number of the hundreds of coming top level domains will pay for their TLD to be included in GoDaddy ads.

We might even see GoDaddy.baseball during ballgames.