Reglikedomain industry desk

Super Bowl for strong quarter — Verisign credits

Super Bowl ads propel fresh domain registrations.

Verisign (NASDAQ:VRSN) released earnings and business results for Q1 2017 yesterday following the closing bell.

9.5 million fresh .com and .net registrations occurred in the quarter, beating expectations.

While down from the 10.0 gross registrations in the same quarter of 2016, that quarter was during the Chinese investment surge. In Q1 2015 only 8.7 million fresh .com and .net names were registered, which is more in line with the norm.

Verisign thinks that Super Bowl commercials for websites and domain names led to the increased registrations.

The higher-than-expected fresh registrations helped increase the overall base of .com/.net domains by 1.4 million. Verisign had forecast an increase of only 0.7 million to 1.2 million.

The firm expects the base to increase by 0.0 million to 0.4 million in Q2 2017.

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