Only $750k To Raise Awareness of Fresh TLDs? Seriously?

Raising awareness regarding fresh TLDs on a microscopic budget.

If you’re regarding to usher in what Peter Dengate Thrush calls “the biggest change I think we have seen on the Internet”, how much would you spend to raise awareness of a limited application window to take advantage of that change?

Let’s also say applicants have to pay $185,000 and you expect $100 million in application fees.

Surely you’d plan to spend a good chunk of change on advertising.

Or not.

As Kevin Murphy points out today, ICANN plans to award a contract to an ad agency for a limited budget of only $750,000 to promote the fresh TLD program.

I agree with him that most of the awareness will come from non-advertising, such as press articles.

But still, this just doesn’t make sense to me.

This is a big change. It concerns me that ICANN is reserving regarding 40x as much for legal issues as it is for advertising.