Outrageous and stupid numbers regarding fresh top level domains
Michael spotted an article regarding fresh TLDs over at AdWeek today.
The article is regarding how much it will cost brands to protect their brands when fresh TLDs come online. It liberally quotes Bob Liodice, president and CEO of the Association of National Advertisers, and that shows in the ridiculous numbers the article quotes.
Take a look at the infographic and then come back here…
OK, you’re back.
Let’s blow this infographic apart.
1. The first assumption is how many brands you’ll have to protect. The infographic suggests 1,000 is a conservative number since brands like P&G and Johnson & Johnson have “tens of thousands”.
First question: how many of those brands do these firms own the second level .com domain for right now?
I don’t think they own the second level .com for many of them, which means they would have no reason to register the second level under some other fresh TLD like .pizza.
A better measuring stick: how many of the brands are registered on .biz and .info?
2. The infographic assumes you register all (ok, just 1,000) of your brands in the trademark clearinghouse and then buy them in sunrise. If you have vital brands then you might want to do this, but the clearinghouse and sunrise are an expensive way to register domains of secondary importance..
3. It assumes brands want to protect their domains on half of all fresh TLDs.
Right now that’s regarding 700, so AdWeek assumes, at $300k per fresh domain, that a business would pay $210 million to protect itself.
700 is a lot of domains to protect. Consider that approximately half of fresh TLD strings are .brands. Then consider that a lot will be severely restricted or closed. Then consider that you’d be stupid to spend $300,000 to protect yourself from registrations on .pizza, even if you’re Pizza Hut.
All things considered, it’s a pretty stupid infographic. Suggesting that firms will spend $210 million on protective registrations defies logic.
If it were logical, I’d go buyout Mark Monitor right now.
It’s fine to make assumptions, but you need to gut check the final number. If it doesn’t make sense, then your assumptions are wrong.
I’m not sure if the author worked on the infographic, since the article quotes lower numbers — just “tens of millions”.
The article also states the number of “web site domains” will explode by 6,300%.
That neglects the hundreds of country code domains, many of which dwarf registrations in gTLDs. Count those and the namespace is growing by 4x to 5x.
It’s still a big deal, but 6,300% is just plain wrong.
Bottom line: yes, fresh TLDs will cost firms something for brand protection. Yes, the namespace is growing by a lot.
But outrageous and stupid numbers simply create fear instead of common sense action.
