On September 30, Sedo.com published the results of its survey carried out last August in which it interviewed 360 managers responsible for their companies’ marketing and advertising programs.
The survey revealed that 54% of those interviewed were not aware that the new gTLDs would already be available this year, and 62% felt that these new strings would only serve to increase confusion on the Internet, although 64% believe that the use of these new domains will be a success.
The possibility of obtaining an address that would be easy to memorize was approved by 35% of those surveyed and 28% stated that they would buy such addresses essentially for this reason.
88% of participants affirmed that none of their clients had planned to buy one of the gTLDs, whereas 59% of those interviewed plan to use a domain other than a .COM for an advertising campaign.
The survey also provided statistics concerning the use of domain names in the advertizing and marketing sectors and revealed that just over half of those surveyed (54%) had already bought a Web address in the past and that 62% did so for personal reasons and 55% for their company’s website. 33% bought a domain name specifically for a marketing or advertizing campaign and 26% did so for a particular product.
It is also interesting to note that half of those surveyed (52%) declared that they had bought a different domain name to the one originally intended. In this category, 29% said that the problem was lack of availability for the name, 3% said the price was too high and 20% cited both the above reasons. In relation to this, 32% have had to rename a product, a service or a campaign due to lack of availability or to the price of certain domain names.
Those interviewed were also reminded that ICANN developed the Trademark Clearinghouse to help trademark owners protect themselves. A majority of participants (86%) did not know about the Clearinghouse and 85% stated that they had never taken legal action in order to resolve a violation of trademark rights. For those who were aware of the existence of the Trademark Clearinghouse but who had never used it, 49% intend to do so but have not yet had reason to call on its services.
Other replies indicated that 26% of those surveyed are waiting to see if their new web addresses will be accepted and 26% said they were not worried about breach of trademark rights.
Finally, participants were asked to identify the 10 most popular new strings. “.app” seemed to be the most promising in terms of results, followed by “.inc” and “.shop”. The least-favored string would appear to be “.llc”.