Domain Names,  newgTLDs

The inherent advantage ccTLDs will have over newgTLDs

March 4, 2012

The newGTLDs process is underway, 144 applications have been received, a lot more will be before the window closes. 300-500 new applications will be processed by ICANN during the first phase, you can expect another round within a year per the information out there.

While most people believe that the new gTLDs won’t affect .com prices, as do I, a lot of them miss the most obvious advantage ccTLDs have over newgTLDs – the fact that newgTLDs have to be 3 letters or more, whereas all second level ccTLDs have two letters. You might not consider this a major advantage, but in a world where increasingly shorter brands are making an impact, shorter extensions do matter as well.

.insurance might be a hot ticket to huge revenues, if it is allowed, considering .in / .int / .info all exist and ‘similar’ newgTLDs might get rejected, the inherent advantage this offers .IN is pretty huge, aside from the obvious typo traffic. People might actually prefer a shorter acronym for branding.

Another advantage is local significance of the ccTLDs which allows SMEs to acquire and target local audiences without paying a huge bundle for the .com like .co.uk for UK, .de for Germany, .US USA , .IN for India, etc. This is a major advantage over newgTLDs which are more likely to be industry vertical specific for the most part, geo newgTLDs are also being applied for, but most of them address one city, not really a broad base.

Rebranded ccTLDs also will stand to gain, .TV is already doing well for video / television based usage, as are .ME and .CO as brandable alternatives to existing gTLDs and a lot of startups are using non-mainstream ccTLDS like .ly / .io as well, which all increases the user awareness and usage of these extensions.

I’ve written about new gTLDs in the past, if you’d like to read the posts – Forget Domains, buy a TLD! [2008], New TLDs shaking up domaining [2010] & Buy a TLD [2011]

Samit Madan is an advertising professional with almost three decades of experience. He's known as the MediaWizard due to his expertise in advertising & marketing. He currently heads MediaWiz, a leading Media Company.

2 Comments

  • Dave
    March 20, 2012 at 11:16 am

    Why would new gtlds even compete with cctlds? New gtlds will be targeted globally, cctlds to their country of origin mostly. I don’t think gtlds longer than 3 letters will do well, as we have seen in the past.

    • mediawizard
      March 21, 2012 at 12:48 am

      There are a lot of ccTLDs that can be and are used globally, mostly because they mean something more than just the country origin.

      For example – .in is used in USA, UK, Germany, Switzerland, Netherlands, Poland, Japan, Korea, Vietnam etc – primarily because it can be used to denote the preposition ‘in’ or even as a short form of ‘internet’, ‘international’, ‘insurance’, etc.

      Similarly, other refashioned cctlds have been used outside their geo ref – .tv being the best example, others include .co, .me, .ws etc.