According to this latest study by ABC Namebank, entitled “The New-Name-Economy & 2010 Cyber Branding Strategies” there are already some 18,700 companies in the world today that will apply for their own gTLD.
Based on their huge budgets the suggested fee of 100K to 500K is easily affordable. Already, most big companies are either spending millions pushing poorly crafted names or spending millions on defending hit and run squatters.
According to the report they expect the new gTLD;s to create $33 Billion in fees in the first three years.
The prime beneficiaries will be ICANN, which operates as a not-for-profit organization. Other big recipients will be the worldwide domain registrars and highly specialized experts and lawyers while the cascading revenues will go to IT and web support organizations.
According to this study, there is also a huge second layer of applicants, where some 1.1 Million businesses representing the big commercial interests from all the countries of the world that will enter this arena. These organizations basically have no choice, but to fully embrace the new model as the performance of their current and existing name identities are already seriously questionable.
There are also the Government and Municipal bodies all over the world and thousands of trade associations who would like to form exclusive consortium’s to create Cyber-Umbrella-Identities.
The study further refers to the last layers of entrepreneurial players from all over the world who will enter this arena to quickly become the next eBay, Google YouTube or Dell, using the mix of multimedia forces and online visibility.
The study confirms the role of the dotcom suffix as still being the king, and will remain so until the new system is fully entrenched over the next 5-10 years.
Only the best-designed and properly crafted highly logical identities that will pass the stringent test of the Five Star Standard available on the net will have the chance to join the real race while the others will merely be the spectators.
The study also challenges the high non-refundable costs for being very difficult for non-profit, public organization, developing countries, educational services, and religious and local community organizations.
How can anyone think this won’t drive the value of dotCom (especially generic) through the roof?
When it comes to branding,the public needs a constant, not a variable. When all of these vTlds start flooding the market, most of the public will simply default to what they can remember or know best.
It will be an interesting marketing lesson to see how much a company will have to spend to successfully brand their vTld on a regional, national and international level.
Hi David,
Do you feel that .google .bay etc will also drive
up the value of .com ?
Or maybe people will realize that dot-com doesn’t have any real world meaning and that brands and real words do, and companies etc won’t miss the second/last chance to invest in themselves only and catch all traffic. Dot-com is neutral, thats why it doesn’t help in TM disputes. The branding is to the left (and soon to the right) of the dot, except amongst web only entities and domainers, and that’s vanity:)
Also, confusion leads to search, and search finds content, whatever the TLD. Use Google Chrome or Toolbar for a while and your type ins will rarely exceed three letters.. there’s a problem IMHO.
.brand is also safer … ie for banks
.com is King and that is how it will be even if Trillions of new domian name ext come out online
Anthony:
I don’t know what effect .google will have on dotCom. The only thing I know for sure is that .google will only benefit Google. And that’s my point. The brand names are already established.
Just a thought:
DotCom is synonymous with the web. It is, by far, the most popular generic Tld. And here’s the kicker – I believe that some of dotCom’s most valuable future lies in directing traditional media readers, listeners and viewers to the Internet. If you advertise a domain name on cable, radio or print and ask anyone to recall the name they’ll 99.9% default and answer with a dotCom. While traditional media is losing dollars to the Internet, don’t kid yourself and think they’ll disappear. When television first came on the scene most people thought that radio would vanish. It didn’t.
David
“””f you advertise a domain name on cable, radio or print and ask anyone to recall the name they’ll 99.9% default and answer with a dotCom.”””
This is true now but may not be the case in 5 years
Michael:
It won’t be much different. I doubt if any of these vTlds will reach a fraction of the popularity of today’s dotNet or dotOrg. The only exceptions may be vTlds like .google or .mtv because the public is already familiar with those brands.
Of course, as a new generation is weaned on the Internet things will change. Regardless, dotCom will be always be the gold standard for Tlds and their value will continue to rise – especially generic dotCom names. And the reason for that is simple – if there are 10,000 Tlds out there and a company wants to capture the branding for the word Sample, ther top of the food chain will always be Sample.com.
David … I agree that .google will benefit Google … let’s
hope that domains like palmsprings.Google don’t
benefit them too much.
Anthony:
When web sites start seeing Google as their competitor that will be the beginning of the end for Google. Don’t think it can’t happen. However, I believe that Google is too smart to let that happen.