Sedo.com today announced the results of research study of whether those that work in the advertising and marketing industry (or their clients) are aware of the pending launch of new generic top-level domains (gTLDs) in 2013,  and whether they plan to take advantage of these new web addresses.

I was at on Friday at a presentation by Sedo.com, on the subject and these are some of the results in the press release today.

I’m going to point out some more results from the study that weren’t part of the press release today as well.

More than 360 individuals responsible for the advertising or marketing programs at their companies, or who work at advertising or marketing firms, were surveyed in August 2013, revealing that:

54% were unaware that new gTLDs will be introduced this year;

62% felt that the introduction of these new web addresses would make the internet more confusing to navigate;

64% believed that the use and adoption of new gTLDs would be ultimately successful, despite the initial confusion they may cause;

35% said that the main advantage of new gTLDs would be an increased ability to secure a memorable website address, while 28% said that they would be persuaded to purchase one of these new web addresses for this very reason.

88% also said that none of their clients have considered purchasing a new gTLD address.

59% of respondents said that they would consider using a domain that ended in something other than .com for a campaign and 57% said that consumers would easily understand an address ending in something other than .com.

According to the research, 35%believed that the main advantage of new gTLDs would be an increased ability to secure a memorable website address, while 28% said that they would be persuaded to purchase one of these new web addresses if it helped them to create a memorable address for a product or client.

“Additional Findings of Note:

Advertising and Marketing Industry’s Use of Domain Names

·         Just over half of respondents (54 percent) have purchased a website address in the past.

·         Of those that had purchased a website address before, 62 percent did so for a personal website and 55 percent did so for a corporate site.

·         Given the respondents’ field of work, it was not surprising to see that 33 percent said they had purchased a website address for a specific advertising or marketing campaign and 26 percent had purchased for a specific product.

·         Just over half of respondents (52 percent) said that they have had to purchase a different website address than originally planned for their campaigns; 29 percent said that it was because availability was a problem, 3 percent said expense was the issue and 20 percent said they’d had trouble with both cost and availability.

·         32 percent indicated that they’ve had to go on and rename a product, service or campaign because the website address they wanted wasn’t available or was too expensive to purchase.

·         Just over 12 percent said that they had discussed using a new gTLD in an upcoming campaign – while another 18 percent said they hadn’t, but now plan on bringing it up.

Trademark Clearinghouse

·         Survey respondents were reminded that, as a rights protection mechanism, ICANN has developed the Trademark Clearinghouse to help trademark holders protect themselves from potential abuse during the launch of the new gTLDs.

·         A majority (86 percent) were unaware that the Clearinghouse existed, while 85 percent said that they have never had an issue where they’ve had to contest a trademark infringement.

·         Among respondents that knew of the Clearinghouse but hadn’t used it, nearly half (49 percent) said they ultimately plan to, but had not yet had a chance to do so – showing that despite not using it yet, they understood the value of registering their marks. Other responses indicated that 26 percent are waiting to see if these new website addresses are adopted; and another 26 percent are simply not afraid of trademark infringement.

New gTLD Chances for Success

·         Respondents were asked to rank the 10 most commonly applied for new gTLDs in order of chances for success. “.app” was deemed the most likely to be successful, followed by “.inc” and “.shop.” The one expected to be least successful was “.llc.”

My favorite stats from the study found that 17% of the respondents would rather have a root canal and 45% percent of respondents said that they would rather re-take high school algebra than try and drive traffic to a terrible domain name.