CENTR Paper Outlines Myths and Facts On New gTLDs

Brand owners are not registering their trademarks across the new gTLDs, following a pattern of legacy TLDs whereby they do not unless the TLD has reached a critical mass of registrations and/or have a particular reason. And as expected following patterns of the launch of previous TLDs. This is one of the findings of a paper commissioned by CENTR to sort out myths and facts for the new gTLDs.

It was largely touted during the consultations that led to the launch of the new gTLD programme that brand owners would be forced to register hundreds or thousands of domain names in the new gTLDs to protect their brands. But when they do not do this already across the existing 250 or so existing ccTLDs and the 21 gTLDs that existed prior to the new gTLD launch, why would they do this in all new gTLDs?

The analysis of registrations by Architelos who wrote the report for CENTR found CSC and MarkMonitor had registered around 10,000 domains across a wide range of new gTLDs, although how many cannot be precisely determined. So it works out that they have not registered that many domains in each gTLD for their clients. And Donuts offered an innovative solution previously offered by .xxx for defensive registrations across all their 150 plus gTLDs. So it’s largely been a myth.

Another myth exposed by the CENTR report was that domains would need to be priced at a level similar to .com to compete while there would be some premium domains as well as premium gTLDs such as .luxury, .lawyer and .attorney. So there have been a wide range of pricing levels, but the typical pricing is the report notes two to three times that of .com.

The battle for who owns the customers, the registry or registrar, has not been determined. Larger registrars have been able to extract premiums such as through placement and being selective about what new gTLDs they offer while smaller players have been taking more of a scattergun approach often signing up as many as possible. The report judgement is that it’s too early to tell who wins this battle.

Smaller registrars have also done well in the battle for registrants of new gTLDs with ten of the top 15 based on registrations being either newcomers or smaller players. This defies another claim in the lead-up to the launch of new gTLDs and becomes another myth according to the report.

Architelos concludes the report by saying they “believe that although history may not exactly itself exactly, … it does follow familiar trends and curves. The hype surrounding new gTLDs prior to launch and the relative disappointment now, nine months into the programme very closely resemble the Technology Adoption Hype Cycle, first introduced by Gartner.”

Architelos also note they believe “the success of many ccTLDs is a fair predictor of the success of sector or geo new gTLDs. They also believe “successful new gTLDs will reflect the economic, geographic and social affinity groups that naturally emerge in society and … this is the long game and there will under-capitalised applicants that cannot survive to play.”

The paper is available for download in full from:
https://centr.org/CENTR-Paper-Myth_and_Fact_New_gTLDs_registries_and_registrars