Awareness of New gTLDs Remains Low Among Advertisers/Marketers: Sedo Survey

Awareness of the coming new gTLDs remains low among advertisers and marketers a survey conducted by Sedo has found. But the majority (64%) when asked yes or no whether new gTLDs would be successful thought they would be successful.

The 361 survey respondents were all employees at advertising or marketing firms, or were responsible for the advertising or marketing programs at their companies, in the United States.

Overall, one quarter (25%) of all respondents were aware that new gTLDs were coming while over half (54%) said they were not aware. The remainder said the new gTLDs were familiar, but weren’t sure.

Almost two-thirds (62%) of the respondents from the marketing and advertising industry thought the introduction of new gTLDs would make it more confusing to navigate the internet and around a quarter (27%) that they will make no difference, while the remaining 11 percent said they would make it less confusing.

But confusion was what 40 percent of respondents thought was the biggest hurdle facing new gTLDs, while one in five thought awareness (22%) and widespread adoption (21%) were the biggest hurdles.

Clients of the marketers and advertisers have not been very forward in bringing up the idea of using one of the new gTLDs with 70 percent saying clients had not discussed using a new gTLD while 12 percent said clients had discussed it. And the remaining 18 percent had not discussed using new gTLDs, but the marketers and advertisers said they were going to bring it up.

Respondents were also asked whether they would consider using a domain that ended in something other than .com for an upcoming campaign. Almost three in five (59%) respondents said that they would consider it, showing how easy it is for those in the advertising and marketing industry – many whom had no awareness of gTLDs at the start of the survey – to understand the value of the greater variety of website addresses that gTLDs enable. This is especially encouraging, as those surveyed were located in the United States, where few are aware of website addres¬ses other than .com.

Respondents were also asked whether consumers would understand a website address ending in something other than .com if it appeared in a campaign. A majority (57%) said they would indeed understand what it was.

Respondents were also queried about what would get them to purchase a new gTLD. Only 12 percent of respondents said they would not purchase a new gTLD while others were open to using them for a variety of scenarios.

And what would be the advantage of a new gTLD? Memorable addresses (35%) and the availability of good domains (20%) were by far the most chosen responses while earlier for consumers (15%), innovative uses (13%) were also chosen while 11 percent said there would be no advantage.

When it comes trademark protection, respondents were also asked about their knowledge of the Trademark Clearinghouse. A huge majority (86%) said they were not aware of the Trademark Clearinghouse. And of the 14 percent that were aware of the TMCH, less than one in five has submitted a trademark (17%), 44 percent said they had not and 39 percent were not sure. And of these 14 percent, half (46%) said they planning to use the TMCH, while a quarter (26%) said they were both not afraid of trademark infringement and waiting to see if new gTLDs were adopted.

The survey report can be downloaded in full from https://sedo.com/fileadmin/documents/pressdownload/advertising-and-marketing-industry-gtld-awareness-report-sedo.pdf.