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Google Kills URL Forwarding as Yahoo Caps Some Non-.Com Domains

Andrew Allemann — Wed, 17 Aug 2011 15:15:09 +0000

Domain parking ad providers make changes.

There have been two announcements from the big domain parking ad providers over the past 24 hours that may affect your domain parking company.

According to an email from NameDrive, Google is banning URL forwarding as of October 1. The parking company says clients need to switch to DNS parking, although it says it’s also working on other solutions. [Update: DomainSponsor just sent a notice to its customers as well.]

Partners have known about Google’s plan to ban URL forwarding for a long time.

It will be interesting to see what effect Google’s move will have on domain parking split-testing platforms such as Above.

TrafficZ sent an email to customers yesterday informing them that Yahoo is “capping” revenue on .biz, .co,
.info, .tv, and .us domain names. If the cap is hit, Yahoo will no longer show ads on the domains for three days. However, parking companies will likely display ads from different ad feeds during this period. From my experience, some of these secondary feeds perform quite well on certain TLDs.

Both of these moves address challenges with domain parking; namely fraud. URL forward is frequently abused and limits Google’s insight into the traffic it is monetizing. Domains such as .biz shouldn’t get much type-in traffic, which may be the reason for the cap.

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Surveying the Domain Parking CPA Landscape

Andrew Allemann — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 14:36:36 +0000

There are a number of options for CPA on parked pages, but we’re still trying to figure out what works best.

Last week TheParkingPlace.com, which had been in beta for a while, opened its doors. The sample sites I’ve seen on its parking platform primarily use CPA offers to monetize traffic.

But my headline for the launch — “New Service Brings CPA To Domain Parking” — may have suggested that this was the first attempt to bring CPA to domain parking.

This isn’t the case, although they’re certainly doing it in a different way.

A number of parking companies do CPA in the background, but some of them do it prominently. For example, TrafficZ has been running CPA ads directly on certain parked pages for a couple months. Octane360′s landing pages include multiple monetization options including cost-per-lead, a form of CPA. SmartName has a number of shopping template options, although they pay out on PPC. But they also have modules that let you insert your own ads. Ditto for WhyPark and Epik.

The challenge of CPA on parked pages is scaling. It’s easy to find PPC ads to match a domain name but finding CPA offers is more difficult to automate. TheParkingPlace.com is running offers with a goal — such as getting an email address — and finding a way to make them seem targeted. This is one way to solve the scaling problem, and it will be interesting to see what happens.

We’ve seen quite a bit of innovation in the parking space over the past year or two. As with all innovation, some of it works and some doesn’t. It takes trial and error to figure out what really works. And what works today might not work tomorrow.

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Domain Name Wire’s DOMAINfest Recap

Andrew Allemann — Tue, 08 Feb 2011 03:10:16 +0000

Recapping DOMAINfest 2011.

DOMAINfest Global 2011 attracted nearly 700 people affiliated with the domain name industry.

There was a lot of business and a lot of fun. Here’s my recap.

Monday

I arrived in Santa Monica Monday afternoon and traveled to the Fairmont. Shortly after arriving I headed over to lunch with a few domain investors. Then it was time to set up the BigJumbo exhibition booth.

Monday evening I attended the Southern California Domainers’ meetup held at the penthouse of Mike Mann’s new apartment.

Tuesday

Tuesday afternoon Oversee.net CEO Jeff Kupietzky delivered a “State of the Industry” presentation. Many of his 10 prophecies were bigger than the domain industry but could all shape it in the years to come.

His talk was immediately followed by the main event — Go Daddy founder Bob Parsons.

Parsons’ talk was well received by the crowd. His first few jokes fell flat, but then the standing-room only crowd started to warm up to his story of ups and downs. It was inspiring.

Getting to know the founder of Go Daddy.

After his talk I got to sit down with Parsons for a while. I’ve talked to him on the phone a couple times but it was nice to meet him in person. I tried to get the scoop on who the GoDaddy.co girl was, but he wasn’t about to spill the beans.

Speaking of .co, that evening .co hosted a Polynesian Paradise Party at the Fairmont’s pool. This was followed by two unofficial parties: one hosted by Demand Media at the Huntley across the street and one at Mike Mann’s apartment.

Wednesday

I had a busy day full of meetings before the Golden Era of Hollywood party at SkyBar sponsored by VeriSign. The party was fun and featured synchronized swimmers and a mermaid.

Sam Aidun on stage.

TrafficZ’s Sam Aidun plays in a band called Foul Play, and the band happened to be playing Wednesday night just down the road from the Hollywood party. After the party about 40 domainers went to The Viper Room on Sunset Boulevard to see his band play.

I don’t know how to describe Aidun’s band. Humor rock?

In one cool party trick, Sam took the entire top off a beer can with his teeth. He also found a way to work “whois” and “domain transfer” into a song.

Like any good domainer, Aidun owns his band name FoulPlay.com.

TrafficZ co-founder Ammar Kubba has a new condo just down the road from The Viper Room. In an apparent bid to piss off his new neighbors, he decided to invite 40 rowdy people to the roof top deck after midnight.

Ammar’s spontaneous rooftop party.

Thursday

In the morning I caught a workshop titled “Tips and Strategies for Buying and Selling Domains” moderated by Oversee.net’s Lisa Box. That was followed by numerous meetings and then Moniker’s live auction. No major domains sold during the auction, but that has been the reality of late. I’ll have more thoughts on this in a later post.

Then it was time to head the the Playboy Mansion. I have to admit that, after three years at this party, it’s getting a little old for me. It’s lost its edge. Perhaps I’m in a minority, and I’m certainly not complaining.

There was also an unfortunate incident on one of the buses on the way back to the hotel. Once I saw the aftermath of the scuffle I sobered up quickly. There were lots of after parties, but at that point I just wanted to crash.

Friday

After a long week of fun and business it was finally time to head home.

As a veteran DOMAINfest attendee, I urge you to not book an early morning flight after four days of DOMAINfest.

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That’s a Wrap on DOMAINfest 2011

Andrew Allemann — Sat, 05 Feb 2011 16:04:44 +0000

Three days of domaining in Santa Monica.

The biggest ever DOMAINfest conference has come to a close.

Almost 700 domain investors, service providers, and attorneys attended this year’s three day event in Santa Monica. Here are a few of my thoughts:

- It’s kind of funny showing up to the airport the day after DOMAINfest. There are a lot of hungover domainers.

- A lot of the hallway talk at the conference was about how it was unlikely ICANN would greenlight the new TLD applicant guidebook in March. It appears we now have confirmation of this.

- The Demand Media party was particularly upbeat given the large crowd of newly minted millionaire’s thanks to the IPO.

- The most entertaining evening was Wednesday night watching TrafficZ’s Sam Aidun play in his band Foul Play at the Viper Room. It was a must see.

- There was a lot of buzz about success with Go Daddy’s Premium Listings. More on this later.

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Microsoft Time Change Adds Headache to Yahoo Switchover

Andrew Allemann — Sat, 09 Oct 2010 16:36:30 +0000

Reporting timezone changes with search alliance.

Anyone who has a parking company using a Yahoo feed and all stats services have an added headache to deal with thanks to the switchover from Yahoo to Microsoft.

Until now both Yahoo and Google reported stats based on Pacific time. With the switchover Yahoo/Microsoft stats will now be reported at UTC/GMT.

This is only a one time headache for some companies, such as parking providers, that need to adjust their stats interface. In a message to customers, TrafficZ noted:

In addition, all reporting will transition from Pacific Time to UTC/GMT sometime near the end of the month. The exact date for this change has not yet been announced; however, when it takes effect you may notice a 7 hour lapse in reporting. This lapse will only be a shift due to the change in time standard; it will not affect stats or revenue.

Parking companies will need to sync this with their alternative feeds.

The change may pose a bigger challenge to services such as Above.com, which will need to find a way to sync stats across parking services.

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Aftermarket.com Gears Up For Launch

Andrew Allemann — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 14:17:05 +0000

New ideas come to online domain sales.

Aftermarket.com is getting closer to its relaunch as an online marketplace for buying and selling domain names. In general the marketplace will be similar to what you have come to expect from Sedo and Afternic, but with some twists:

Private auctions – you can hold your own private auction with up to 100 guests

Domain data – pull DomainTools data directly into your listing

Escrow – escrow will be handled through Escrow.com

Aftermarket Parking – Aftermarket.com will offer a parking option directly to sellers. I suspect this will be similar to Sedo and Afternic including a notice on the domain name that it’s for sale. It will be interesting to see how this is branded compared to sister company TrafficZ.

Aftermarket.com was born as a live domain name platform that was used by both sister company DomainTools and third-party sellers, but a return to live domain name auctions is not currently part of Aftermarket.com’s game plan.

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Aftermarket.com Gearing Up for Launch

Andrew Allemann — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 21:01:45 +0000

TCI is working on relaunching its aftermarket business.

Thought Convergence, parent company of TrafficZ, is working on a formal launch of its domain name marketplace Aftermarket.com.

Thought Convergence started using the Aftermarket.com domain name this time two years ago. Since then it has used it primarily as a service for its own and third party event auctions. The company bought the domain name for $125,000 at a Moniker auction in 2008.

You’ll find very little information at Aftermarket.com about what the company’s plans for the site are, but you can submit your email address to be notified when the site launches. Will we see another full time marketplace with the likes of Sedo and Afternic?

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