Why isn't Nominet promoting .UK?

[julian]

So why isn't Nominet promoting the benefits of .co.uk/.UK via a national TV advertising campaign - especially in the wake the of the damage caused by the .UK consultations?

Wouldn't TV advertising increase awareness, growth and credibility all in one hit?

Nominet with more money in its coffers than you could shake a stick at could be helping promote .co.uk and the launch of the new .UK in June this year. Right now Nominet could be actively fighting against these filthy new gTLD's that GoDaddy, 1&1 etc have been shoving down the uninitiated's throat. I suppose this is basically going to war with other registries - but so what - surely if .uk is worth fighting to preserve they should be doing everything in their power to guide UK users to adopt it as the premium extension to represent our glorious country for now and the future?

 

[Edwin]

In no particular order...

A) Who knows what Nominet will do in June?
B) They need those registrars to sell the .uk for them - Nominet don't sell anything direct to "the public" so it would be an incredibly diluted message
C) TV advertising is ludicrously expensive - they'd basically wave bye bye to the Nominet Trust funding if they went for that kind of approach
D) They're very unlikely to get the right ROI - even a TV campaign won't sell the hundreds of thousands or millions of extra domains they would need to pay for the thing, let alone turn a "profit"
E) I'm pretty confident that when the time comes (i.e. when .uk is actually there and purchasable, not just an "idea" that's coming soonish) the media will pay plenty of attention anyway
F) Nominet don't admit that the consultations did any damage
G) Nominet probably feel as unthreatened about the new GTLD as I do - it's all a huge storm in a teacup, but none of the 1,000+ new GTLD will add up to a fraction of the existing .co.uk registrations
H) .uk doesn't need to be fought over to preserve it - it IS and will remain the UK's cctld automatically even if it were to get no promotion at all. In other words, nothing can dethrone .uk at the purely national level

That's probably enough to be getting on with...

 

[retired_member33]

Wouldn't TV advertising increase awareness, growth and credibility all in one hit?

They have their registrars to promote that.. I guess they are too busy counting the money they made from the x.co.uk /xx.co.uk auction and the 12Gbp transfer fee..

I work with a few registers and Nominet has to be the worst one.. A board made up out of incapable peope who run their register the way I would have been playing chess when I was 6 months old.

 

[julian]

Edwin me old china, this is where we differ I'm not sure I believe 'average' internet users/businesses owners are equipped with the knowledge to decide whether .WTF is any good or not and with all the hype surrounding it.

It would be almost understandable if they purchased a few and even tried to develop their business around such extensions - especially given the SEO benefits (joke).

I'm just merely asking if Nominet should consider ramping up their .UK campaign a notch to reinforce .UK is still 'the' domain when the time is right (don't forget last year they were advertising on local radio).

I think such a campaign would have better long term benefits, I wasn't really thinking about using a TV ad in terms of a quick hit on ROI.

In no particular order...

A) Who knows what Nominet will do in June?
B) They need those registrars to sell the .uk for them - Nominet don't sell anything direct to "the public" so it would be an incredibly diluted message
C) TV advertising is ludicrously expensive - they'd basically wave bye bye to the Nominet Trust funding if they went for that kind of approach
D) They're very unlikely to get the right ROI - even a TV campaign won't sell the hundreds of thousands or millions of extra domains they would need to pay for the thing, let alone turn a "profit"
E) I'm pretty confident that when the time comes (i.e. when .uk is actually there and purchasable, not just an "idea" that's coming soonish) the media will pay plenty of attention anyway
F) Nominet don't admit that the consultations did any damage
G) Nominet probably feel as unthreatened about the new GTLD as I do - it's all a huge storm in a teacup, but none of the 1,000+ new GTLD will add up to a fraction of the existing .co.uk registrations
H) .uk doesn't need to be fought over to preserve it - it IS and will remain the UK's cctld automatically even if it were to get no promotion at all. In other words, nothing can dethrone .uk at the purely national level

That's probably enough to be getting on with...

 

[Edwin]

This is the most applicable of all
A) Who knows what Nominet will do in June?

 

[Sound]

Nominet made it very clear that the number one priority for wanting to release .uk was the 1,000 new GTLD's being released.

The new GTLD's are not aimed at domainers they are being released to give worldwide businesses the choice of which domain to use.

It would seem that some people are sticking their heads in the sand. How can the release of 1,000 new GTLD's with a media campaign already started not affect the prices of .co.uk and the launch of .uk.

Clever people who adapt to change like Frank Paul will survive with small portfolios full of prime domains which will always be in demand and the balls to ask for high prices when an end user calls.

Large portfolio owners of long tail EMD who haven't sold domains when the going was easy are going to crash and burn and that's before Nominets five year time bomb explodes.

 

[websaway]

Nominet made it very clear that the number one priority for wanting to release .uk was the 1,000 new GTLD's being released.

The new GTLD's are not aimed at domainers they are being released to give worldwide businesses the choice of which domain to use.

It would seem that some people are sticking their heads in the sand. How can the release of 1,000 new GTLD's with a media campaign already started not affect the prices of .co.uk and the launch of .uk.

Clever people who adapt to change like Frank Paul will survive with small portfolios full of prime domains which will always be in demand and the balls to ask for high prices when an end user calls.

Large portfolio owners of long tail EMD who haven't sold domains when the going was easy are going to crash and burn and that's before Nominets five year time bomb explodes.

You could argue that the launch of 1000 gtld's with all the confusion it's causing will increase the value of .com and co.uk ( uk ) quality domains.
Biz and info bombed when there were only few extensions. It's not a case of head in the sand it's simply a case of applied logic.

 

[Edwin]

Nominet made it very clear that the number one priority for wanting to release .uk was the 1,000 new GTLD's being released.

The new GTLD's are not aimed at domainers they are being released to give worldwide businesses the choice of which domain to use.

It would seem that some people are sticking their heads in the sand. How can the release of 1,000 new GTLD's with a media campaign already started not affect the prices of .co.uk and the launch of .uk.

Clever people who adapt to change like Frank Paul will survive with small portfolios full of prime domains which will always be in demand and the balls to ask for high prices when an end user calls.

Large portfolio owners of long tail EMD who haven't sold domains when the going was easy are going to crash and burn and that's before Nominets five year time bomb explodes.

If you've been watching the first new GTLD come onto the market, you'll have seen that none have exactly set the world alight. The GTLD with the most registrations is .guru, followed by .photography
http://www.registrarstats.com/TLDDomainCounts.aspx

What you have to remember is that 7 new extensions are being released every week by Donuts, and within weeks to months other registries are also going to be bringing their own new GTLD onto the market.

With 1,000 extensions clamouring for attention, each one will get the very briefest, fleeting moment of attention at best and then it's on to the next one.

Across all 1,000 extensions, I'm sure there will inevitably be some take up by actual businesses. But businesses happy to slum it with an extension that literally nobody's ever heard of and which will need explaining every single time to every single person who sees it aren't potential aftermarket buyers anyway. So it may affect Nominet's business, but it shouldn't affect domain investors much.

 

[julian]

Ironically, .info and maybe .biz actually have a shred of credibility compared now the rest of the new junk.

http://www.registrarstats.com/TLDDomainCounts.aspx

 

[Edwin]

For an even bleaker picture, take a look at the new GTLD release calendar on http://www.calzone.org/ - it's an unending stream of rubbish...

 

[retired_member34]

For an even bleaker picture, take a look at the new GTLD release calendar on http://www.calzone.org/ - it's an unending stream of rubbish...

Off topic, but I wondered why you would link to a folded pizza...