ND Weekly #76
Hi everybody, and happy Saturday,
What with beta testing our fabulous new FO and NDX Market, and various other activities which have been taking up my time recently (such as kite-surfing), I almost forgot to do my weekly news roundup, so here it is, complete and unabridged, and only one day late.
Have a great weekend,
Mr. Blogs
ND Weekly #75
Is The Worst Behind Us? Online Ad Revenues Pick Up In The Fourth Quarter.
With Time Warner reporting earnings yesterday, we now have online advertising numbers for the fourth quarter from the four largest players: Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, and AOL. Tallying up their online advertising revenues provides a decent proxy for the health of the overall online advertising industry as a whole, since they represent a majority of those revenues. (For comparison, see IAB numbers for the U.S. only). After a full year of slowing growth, their combined ad revenues actually picked up in the fourth quarter, showing a 3 percent rise compared to the third quarter. Combined revenues grew 8 percent on an annual basis.
Like everyone else, I’ve been expecting to see continuing pressure on Internet advertising. In the third quarter, the sequential growth of the combined ad revenues from these four companies ground to a halt, going from 12.7 percent sequential growth in the fourth quarter of 2007 to 0.6 percent in the third. (All growth rates are quarter over quarter, unless otherwise noted).
More…
Can the all-seeing, all-knowing Google be trusted to rule the world?
Google now challenging ITV to be UK’s top advertiser. It started last weekend, when a Google employee typed a single backslash in the wrong place at the wrong time. This act resulted in the Google website marking every page on the internet as potentially harmful. The internet was no longer a safe place. Google, the web’s gatekeepers, said so.
The breakdown only lasted for around 40 minutes and the company spent the rest of this week trying to make it up to humanity. In just a few days, Google gave us the ability to virtually plunge the depths of the oceans and then track the every movement of friends and family using our mobile phones. It also found time to map Mars and helped set up a new university to prepare scientists for an age when machines are cleverer from man.
More…
Online ad spend set to slow ’significantly’ over next five years
The growth of online advertising is set to slow “significantly” over the next five years, according to Forrester Research, forcing the company to revise its forecasts for European advertising spend.
Internet spend throughout Europe, which until 2007 has been increasing as much as 30% a year, is set to rise by just 10% in 2009 due to a maturing market and the current recession, according to the European Online Advertising Through 2013 report.
Two years ago, Forrester predicted online ad spend would increase by 14% this year. The company has also lowered its forecasts for annual growth rates in 2010 and 2011.
Over the next five years, the market is now expected to increase at a compound annual rate of 9%, to €14.8bn in 2013.
More…
Arena.com Owner Wins Domain Name Arbitration
Sometimes I see a domain name dispute and wonder what the heck the complainant was thinking. When I saw that the one word generic domain name Arena.com was in dispute, I scratched my head. First of all, I’d never heard of the complainant. Second, you better have some damning evidence against the respondent to go after a generic word such as Arena. When I see the domain name Arena.com, I think of sports arenas.
As it turns out, the complainant didn’t have good evidence of bad faith registration by the respondent. It was just another case of a company not wanting to pay fair market value for a domain name.
The complainant, Descente, Ltd. and Arena Distribution, S.A., offers a swimwear line called Arena. The respondent, Portsnportals Enterprises Limited, is a member company of the Hutchison Whampoa group of companies, which operates in a wide variety of commercial areas. The respondent used the Arena.com domain for a document management system earlier this decade but no longer uses the domain name.
More…
‘Spam-friendly’ domain registrars named and shamed
The vast majority of spam (83 per cent) is linked to sites established through ten domain name registrars, according to a new study.
An analysis of junk mail messages by anti-spam firm Knujon (”no junk” spelled backwards) found that while there are 900 accredited domain name registrars, spammers register their spamvertised domains though only a tiny sample.
Knujon’s study names and shames the registrars who are contributing (unwittingly or not) to the junk mail problem.
More…
Domain Pigeon: Your Unintelligible Five Letter Domain Name Awaits
You’ve done the market research. You’ve built the killer app. Now, all you need is a decent domain name. Preferably a .com. Why? Because the iPhone doesn’t have a .net button, for one thing. But finding something short and memorable can be difficult at best. Enter Domain Pigeon, a domain search service that eschews one-at-a-time searches by allowing you to thumb through a laundry list of available domains - including the five-letter .com domains that are still available.
We’ve used a number of domain name searches, and Domain Pigeon’s approach is among the best we’ve seen. It’s simple and straightforward. Best of all, you get to see extensive lists of available domains all at once. But there’s one catch: you can’t buy a domain there.
More…
Goldberger on Toys.com Team, eToys.com Buyer Remains Mystery
I spent several hours yesterday reading through bankruptcy documents before breaking the news about a major domain name auction in Delaware on February 4. Since then I’ve read more documents to try to piece together the major winners at the auction.
The two high profile winners — Faculty Lounge Partners and Eagle, LLC probably won’t ring a bell with you. It appears they were set up to buy domains in the auction.
There’s a familiar name on the Faculty Lounge Partners purchase documents for Toys.com: Ari Goldberger. I have sent an e-mail to the domain name attorney by the same name to confirm his involvement and will update this story later. You can see the initial qualified bid document submitted before the auction here .
More…
ICANN Loses $4.6 Million Of Your Money In The Stock Market
According to a new post on Circle ID, ICANN lost $4.6 million last year in the stock market, which the author’s post points out is equivalent to its fee ($.20) on 23 million domain registrations.
How did this happen you ask.
Well basically, when it was formed in 1998, ICANN was allowed to set up “reasonable reserves for future expenses and contingencies reasonably related to the legitimate activities of the Corporation”.
In 2002, ICANN proposed having a $10 Million dollar reserve.
By the 2007-2008 budget year, ICANN’s reserve grew to a staggering $25 Million.
That’s $25 Million in cash, over and above operating expenses.
Profit if you will.
More…
Travelzoo Purchases Fly.com Domain Name for $1.8 Million
Travelzoo, a global Internet media company, today announced that it has purchased the Internet domain name fly.com for $1,760,000 in cash. Travelzoo intends to use this domain name for a new information Web site to be launched in February.
“We are delighted to acquire fly.com for our new offering,” said Brian Clark, senior vice president and general manager, search products, Travelzoo. “The name is a perfect match for Travelzoo’s renowned approach: simple, fun, and world class. Where others see doom and gloom we see opportunities to serve travelers and advertisers with innovative approaches to finding the best values in travel.”
More…
DNW Interview: Brandon Abbey of Escrow.com
Escrow.com President Brandon Abbey discusses Escrow.com and the challenges of starting an escrow company.
Big ticket domainers — and even smaller ones who want safe domain transfers — often turn to Escrow.com for domain name escrow services. The company was founded in 1999 by Fidelity National Financial, but has been privately held since May 2004. I’ve met Escrow.com president and managing director Brandon Abbey at a handful of domain name shows, and have always been curious how the company runs. In the interview that follows, you’ll see that the escrow business is highly regulated. Abbey will tell you (and he’s not joking) that the penalties for not running a tight ship are high: he’d go to jail.
More…
Thanks to the following sources:
http://www.techcrunch.com
http://technology.timesonline.co.uk
http://www.brandrepublic.com
http://domainnamewire.com
http://www.readwriteweb.com
http://biz.yahoo.com
http://www.theregister.co.uk
http://www.thedomains.com
