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Consolidation
continues to change the domain
world as we knew it. In one
of the biggest mashups to date, Rook
Media acquired Oversee.net's
seminal domain monetization
business, DomainSponsor
(including a large portfolio of
domains owned by DS), in a deal announced today. The price
was not disclosed.
DomainSponsor was founded in 2002,
the same year I entered the domain
business and they quickly became a huge
power in the PPC space. It was
such a lucrative sector that many competitors
followed and even in the wake of a
devastating recession and upstream
providers (primarily Google) dramatically
slicing payouts to domain owners, new
entrants continued to join the
fray (even as others were
exiting).
One
of the most successful new players
has been Zurich, Switzerland based
Rook Media |
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who
we profiled in an April
2013 Cover Story. While
Rook, founded in 2011, was new as a
corporate entity, its five
principals are very experienced
players in the domain
monetization business with their
bonds formed during time they spent
together at NameDrive.com. I
spoke with Rook Media COO Daniel
Law this afternoon and
he said he has been working on the
DomainSponsor acquisition for two
years now. Law also credited Gregg
McNair, who has close
contacts at both Rook and Oversee,
with helping make the deal happen
(McNair is involved in many industry
enterprises, including domain
brokerage company Igloo.com).
For the foreseeable future the Rook
and DomainSponsor websites will
continue to operate under the same
names with Rook incorporating the
best features of each on the two
platforms. |
Debra
Domeyer, the CEO at Los Angeles
based Oversee.net said, “Rook Media is
the perfect company to buy
Oversee’s domain monetization business.
They value its industry leadership,
technology, clients, and talented team.
Coupled with Rook’s leadership in
Europe, the combined entity has an
unsurpassed breadth of product offering
and monetization solutions.”
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Rook Media CEO Ash Rahimi
Rook Media CEO Ash Rahimi
Rook Media CEO Ash Rahimi
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Rook Media CEO Ash Rahimi
said, "The
combination of Rook Media and
DomainSponsor is a game changer
for our industry. These two
companies complement each other’s
strengths and will provide our
customers with the best US and
international domain monetization
solution. With unmatched
relationships with the biggest
advertising providers in the
industry and our combined in-house
technology solutions, there has
literally never been a better way to
monetize domains.”
Oversee
said that over
230 million unique users per
month visit DomainSponsor’s direct
navigation ad network. Rook Media
believes the know-how that has
allowed them to raise payment
standards and realize substantial
growth in the monetization space
will allow them to serve
DomainSponsor's current clients very
well.
Oversee.net
continues to own and operates a
portfolio of websites and mobile
apps in travel, retail and consumer
finance and, with the completion of
this transaction, they now expect to
focus on more aggressively
developing those growth
businesses. |
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It
remains to be seen what Oversee will
now do with the DomainFest
conference that they have staged under
the DomainSponsor banner annually
for the past decade (the 2014
edition was just held in
Hollywood, California). The
conference was not part of the deal
with Rook and |
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with Oversee
having now divested itself of
DomainSponsor, as well as domain
registrar Moniker.com and
auction platform SnapNames, it
would not be surprising if they
decided a domain conference no
longer fits their business model.
With
Easter having just been celebrated
Sunday, it is also interesting to
note that Daniel Law left a little
"easter egg" in the
comments he made in our annual State
of the Industry Cover Story
back in January. Law had already
been working on the DomainSponsor acquisition
for some time and though he couldn't
talk about it openly he did say this
about the domain monetization space,
"It seems to me that the field is ripe for consolidation
and I think one of the further challenges of 2014 will be how to take advantage of and engender this needed maturation, as well as tempering it to be a positive change clearly evident to the outside world."
As of today, at least from Rook's
standpoint, consider that challenge
met in a big way with David
essentially acquiring Goliath. |
Rook
Media COO Daniel Law |
It seems to me that the field is ripe
for consolidation and I think one of the
further challenges of 2014 will be how
to take advantage of and engender this
needed maturation, as well as tempering
it to be a positive change clearly
evident to the outside world. - See more
at: http://www.dnjournal.com/cover/2014/january-page2.htm#sthash.DpHVPX6J.dpuf
It seems to me that the field is ripe
for consolidation and I think one of the
further challenges of 2014 will be how
to take advantage of and engender this
needed maturation, as well as tempering
it to be a positive change clearly
evident to the outside world. - See more
at: http://www.dnjournal.com/cover/2014/january-page2.htm#sthash.DpHVPX6J.dpuf
It seems to me that the field is ripe
for consolidation and I think one of the
further challenges of 2014 will be how
to take advantage of and engender this
needed maturation, as well as tempering
it to be a positive change clearly
evident to the outside world. - See more
at: http://www.dnjournal.com/cover/2014/january-page2.htm#sthash.DpHVPX6J.dpuf
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