|
Hot
wheels! Just a few of the nice rides rented for
the T.R.A.F.F.I.C. Road Rally Feb. 17
(Photo courtesy of Barbara Neu)
Like Super Bowl week, T.R.A.F.F.I.C has
blossomed into an extravaganza that has become more than a trade
show. It attracts ambitious business people who know the event's
festive atmosphere is conducive to getting deals done. So I
was looking forward to this 10th outing in the T.R.A.F.F.I.C. series
at the Venetian Hotel. I've been to 9 out of 10 of
them, missing only Las Vegas in 2005 because my daughter was
graduating from high school that week (I'm looking forward to taking
her to her first T.R.A.F.F.I.C. show in May
when conference organizers Rick Schwartz and Howard Neu
will be staging their first family oriented event at Walt Disney
World's Grand Floridian Hotel). Knowing the show's track record
I arrived in Las Vegas with high expectations, and once again
those expectations were fully met.
|
LeaseThis.com's
Carron Allen
welcoming ladies to a Day at the Spa |
My wife and I arrived at the Venetian a couple
of hours before the kick-off party, just in time for Diana
to take advantage of another one of those "special
events". Since the guys got to do their thing with the
Sunday Road Rally, LeaseThis.com
decided someone should so something special for the women
too.
They made it happen by hosting a day at the hotel's
prestigious Canyon Ranch Spa where the ladies were
pampered with a massage, facial or pedicure - a nice gesture
that I'm sure was widely appreciated. Domains have
traditionally been a "male sport" but that has
been changing in recent years and I'm glad to see it
happening. I think all of the major domain conferences have
been very well-run events, but if I had one criticism it
would be that the social activities surrounding the shows
have been geared too much toward men only. I'm hopeful that
the LeaseThis event will be the first of many more with
female attendees given equal time and attention.
|
As soon as Diana was back from the spa it was time to head to
the ballroom for the welcoming cocktail party, always an
electricity-filled event at T.R.A.F.F.I.C. With 530 registrants on
hand the room was soon buzzing with activity. Some of the talk
centered on another T.R.A.F.F.I.C. first, a limited or no reserve
live auction that Moniker would conduct right after the cocktail
event. This was a prelude to their main live auction (under the SnapNames
Live banner) on Wednesday afternoon. This auction
"appetizer" featured a short list of names but still
generated close to $200,000 in sales.
Wall
to wall crowd at T.R.A.F.F.I.C. West welcoming cocktail party Feb.
18.
I mentioned at the start of this review that
T.R.A.F.F.I.C. has become the place to get face to face
business deals done. After show hours, many companies host private
dinners, hospitality suites or parties to introduce new business
initiatives. That's why Bido.com
(a new company I am involved in with three partners) chose to stage
its launch party at T.R.A.F.F.I.C. after the show's opening day
concluded with the Moniker auction. The Bido party drew a capacity
crowd to the Venetian's Tao Nightclub.
As much as I respect
words I have to agree with the old adage that a picture is
worth a thousand words - and a video is even better!
Since TV production pros Warren Walker and Marcia
Lynn Walker of DomainerTV.com were on hand to
videotape the Bido event I will direct you to their
site to get a real feel for the atmosphere there
and interviews with attendees and several company principals
(Warren and Marcia asked me do the interviewing since prior
to that night no one in the crowd knew what Bido was going
to be about).
The next morning (Tuesday, Feb. 19)
Schwartz and Neu gave their official welcoming address to
attendees. Schwartz re-iterated his belief that the current
downturn in the general economy will draw more attention and
investment to the domain space than ever before because
people in other sectors will see that "money is still
being made here". Schwartz added that on the
|
Warren
and Marcia Lynn Walker
DomainerTV.com |
| Internet the domain is the center
of everything. "The house can burn down, but the land
still stands," he said. |
With respect to domains Schwartz has always
been the eternal optimist but he is concerned that the value
of domain assets have increased so much that predators are now
looking for ways to separate domain owners from their assets. We
saw a prime example of that this week with the introduction of a new
bill in the U.S. Congress that could have a disastrous impact
on domain owners if dangerous language in that bill is not changed
or removed. I talk about that development in our February
Newsletter so I won't belabor the point here, especially
since Internet
Commerce Association Legal Counsel Phil Corwin
and Executive Director Michael Collins also had plenty to say
about the challenges facing the industry when they followed Schwartz
and Neu onstage.
ICA
Legal Counsel Phil Corwin (left) and Executive Director
Michael Collins
Corwin and Collins had just returned from
representing the ICA at the ICANN meeting in New Delhi,
India. Though domain owners pay all of the freight in the domain
registration business (and those registrations provide an estimated 40%
of ICANN's operating budget) Collins related having a discussion with
a new ICANN board member who didn't know the "domain
business" even existed. It's little wonder then that the
industry has had no representation within ICANN. ICA hopes to change
that by joining ICANN's Business Constituency where the
non-profit trade association has been provisionally accepted for
membership pending review of some required documentation.
Corwin noted that without the ICA's current
presence in Washington, D.C. there would be no one to speak
up for domain owners when legislation like the bill we saw
introduced this week is proposed. He added that those who want to
get their hands on domains they are not entitled to are not content
with the fact that the existing WIPO and UDRP systems
already rule against domain owners in the vast majority of cases.
They want to get the law of the land changed so there will
essentially be no barriers preventing them from taking the names
they want.
Corwin urged domain owners to get involved in determining
their own future by learning more at InternetCommerce.org
and joining the ICA as a member. I am on the ICA's board of directors
and am in full agreement with Phil and Michael. Without broad based
support and funding from the domain community, this war (and many
livelihoods) will surely be lost.
T.R.A.F.F.I.C.
co-founders Rick Schwartz (left) and Howard Neu
Schwartz and Neu established "Transparency"
as the overall theme for this edition of T.R.A.F.F.I.C. so
appropriately the opening educational seminar was titled Transparency
in the Industry. In today's system, few if any domain
owners know how much money their domains actually earn (before the
money starts being divvied up) and what
percentage of those earnings actually filter down to them after
monetizers (including Google, Yahoo and the various
parking companies that provide their feeds) take their cuts. This
panel featured Jamie McMillan (Linkshare.com), Michael
Gilmour (ParkLogic.com and WhizzbangsBlog.com), Jonathan
Boswell (LeaseThis.com), Tom Cuthbert (Click Forensics) and
Rick Schwartz.
Several panelists called for independent third
party auditing of PPC providers since domain owners currently have
nothing but a promise they are getting what they deserve. Another
issue is that there are no standard metrics. Each parking company
has their own definition of what constitutes a click or a unique
visitor, making it impossible to do meaningful side by side
comparisons.
|
Michael
Gilmour
WhizzbangsBlog.com |
Gilmour has been one of the leading advocates
for change and increased transparency in the monetization
process and has written extensively about it on his blog.
Gilmour said "getting real transparency and a uniform
set of standards is a passion of mine because those things
are the key to getting higher valuations of domain
names."
Gilmour said many advertisers are currently reluctant to
spend in the PPC space because there are no standards and little insight into what is now a very
arcane process. He said domain owners are also getting
disenchanted with parking as a form of monetization. He
cited a survey asking domain owners why they were moving to
or considering moving to different business models. 23% said
they would leave because of lack of transparency, 13.5%
said they did not trust their parking company and the same
percentage cited wildly fluctuating earnings per click.
Gilmour pointed out that it is in the PPC companies' own
best interests to embrace standards and transparency if
they want to keep their customer base. |
Of course, there is always a lot of finger
pointing at the giants at the top of the monetization mountain - Google
and Yahoo! - when the issue of transparency comes up. One
of the most interesting things I heard at the show (actually in a
meeting right after the show) was a comment from a major figure in
the Internet advertising space (not a domainer) who said he was
working on a new platform that could quadruple domain owner's
earnings and free them forever from reliance on Google and
Yahoo.
We all know talk is cheap, but this
individual's company already has a well established business
relationship with major advertisers and ad agencies and I would not
discount anything that he has to say. He is at an exploratory stage
now and said if he pulls the trigger his system could be live in
6-12 months. My guess is that whether it is done by his company, or
someone else, given the growing level of dissatisfaction with the
present system among domain owners (and barring any major changes in
the status quo), new ad platforms are coming that will change the
current landscape considerably. It is just a matter of time.
| During the noon lunch break, Fusu.com
founder Tobias Ratschiller talked about his new
domain "stock exchange" service. It allows domain
owners to sell up to a 45% share of a domain name to
investors on the Fusu market. It is an interesting idea with
a lot of potential but many questions are still to be
answered and hurdles to clear - for example, are these
securities that would be subject to SEC regulations
in the U.S. (the company is based in the Slovak Republic)?,
does the investor get a proportionate share of the domain's
PPC or business revenue? I understand the answer to the
latter is no - that the primary upside would be getting a proportionate
share of the sales price of the domain if the owner decides
to sell it, or getting a higher price from other share
buyers if domain values continue to go up. Fusu has already
succeeded in getting some high profile domains offered on
their site (and gotten shares sold in those domains),
including Warning.com, Eel.com and Flowers.mobi. |
Tobias
Ratschiller
Fusu.com founder |
I have heard both pro and con arguments from
experienced domain owners about the viability of this new platform
and it is one that warrants further study before I could make an
informed judgment. I do think that something like this, if done
right and in compliance with applicable financial laws and
standards, would open domain investment to a much broader range of
people, especially those who cannot afford to buy a high quality
generic domain outright. However, my initial gut reaction is that
the system currently has more advantages for the domain owner than
the share buyer. I think the interests of both will have to be
equally balanced for a stock system to gain broad-based acceptance.
Fusu does have first mover advantage so if they gain enough buyers
and sellers to develop a liquid market and successfully allay
concerns that have been expressed they could certainly make
things interesting.
After lunch, transparency was again the topic
of discussion - this time from the advertiser's point of view - in a
panel titled Gaining the Trust of the Advertiser.
Michael Gilmour and Joanthan Boswell returned to the dais for this
discussion and were joined by Hal Bailey (Google.com), Ammar
Kubba (TrafficZ.com), Dr. Chris Hartnett (founder of USA
Global Link) and Divyank Turakhia (Skenzo.com). Gilmour
showed a slide stating the Internet Advertising Bureau's demand for
transparency. The
IAB statement said "The goal of the IAB and the entire
interactive industry is simple: to achieve transparency in audience
counts and revise out-of-date methodologies. For the interactive
industry...integrity in audience measurement is a fundamental necessity." In view of that, the current lack of transparency
goes a long way toward explaining why the Internet's share of the
global advertising business is still in single digits even though
more than 20% of media is now consumed online.
Part
of the Legal Panel (left to right): Ari Goldberger, Paul Keating and
Phil Corwin
| In another variation on the
theme, Transparency in Legal Proceedings was
the topic of the next seminar. That brought noted attorneys
Ari Goldberger, Paul Keating, Phil Corwin,
Jeremiah Johnston and Steve Sturgeon (who also
served as moderator) to the stage. Sturgeon and Johnston
both said the domain owners who receive groundless cease and
desist |
|
Jeremiah
Johnston
Sedo General Counsel |
orders should stand up to
them. Johnston, who is Sedo's General Counsel, said a
lot of unjustifiable claims are made with the hope that the
domain owner will turn over the domain without a fight.
However when the domain owner points out that there is no basis
for the claim the C&D sender usually disappears.
I personally had that happen recently
when the Mall of America (a big shopping center in Minneapolis)
sent me a C&D letter telling me I had to give them MOA.info.
I pointed out that MOA could mean many things, that there
were no Mall of America or shopping mall links of any kind
on the domains landing page and more importantly that Mall of
America did not even hold a trademark for MOA! I
never heard from them again.
Keating emphasized that you do need to
respond to C&D letters, UDRP actions, etc. otherwise you
will lose by default. Keating also said he felt domain
owners were suffering a death by "paper cuts" as
their rights are steadily being eroded bit by
bit.
|
| "We have to stand up as a
community - otherwise we give up the field one yard at
a time," Keating said. All of the attorneys on this panel have freely
given their time to serve on an advisory board to the
Internet Commerce Association, helping with the kinds of issues Keating
spoke about. His hope is that the community will step up
enough to provide funding that would allow the ICA to defend
key test cases in court that would reverse the trend of
decisions and actions going against domain owners because
they have not had representation at the table while
precedents were being set. |
Adam
Dicker (GoDaddy.com) and Dan Warner (Fabulous.com)
on the Potency of Traffic panel
The final seminar of the day centered on the Potency
of Traffic and featured discussions about how monetization companies
determine the difference between high quality traffic and junk
traffic and how advertisers view traffic from the domain channel.
This panel featured Matt Bentley (Sedo.com), Adam Dicker (GoDaddy.com),
Donny Simonton (Parked.com), Ofer Ronan (Sendori.com)
and Dan Warner (Fabulous.com). There is a big difference
between different kinds of traffic. Ronan said type-in traffic has
the highest conversion rate while arbitrage (recently banned by
Yahoo) has the lowest.
Left
to right: Donny Simonton (Parked.com), Matt Bentley (Sedo.com)
and Ofer Ronan (Sendori.com) on the Potency of
Traffic panel
Having to pay for poorly converting traffic has led
some advertisers to bypass the entire domain channel. Google makes
it easy for those who do not want it to opt out of advertising on
domain landing pages. Walking away from high powered type-in traffic
is like throwing the baby out with the bath water, but some
advertisers have taken that step, in some cases because they are not
aware of the differences between different kinds of traffic.
Bentley said Sedo attends many advertising
conferences to dispel misconceptions and gain greater support for
the domain channel. Those efforts are needed as revenue from
PPC has been falling in recent months. Warner said that trend could
get worse if the industry doesn't clean up trademark and traffic
quality issues. Warner said that the domain channel only accounts
for 3.5% of Google's overall ad revenues and it is possible
that they could pull the plug on the whole channel rather than deal
with headaches like TM issues.
|
|
After that final seminar,
attendees gathered for a networking cocktail party followed
by a dinner hosted by overall show sponsor TrafficZ.com.
During dinner TrafficZ COO Ammar Kubba showed some
highlights from the company's new 5.0 parking program.
Howard Neu also gave more details about the first international
T.R.A.F.F.I.C. show, T.R.A.F.F.I.C.
Down Under, that is coming to Australia's
Gold Coast November 18-20 with Fabulous.com hosting
that event. Neu also held a drawing to give away the Aussie
hat he wore during his announcement about T.R.A.F.F.I.C.
Down Under and the winner, ironically, was an Australian who
probably already has a dozen of these - Michael Gilmour.
To make sure everyone realized that the
deck had not been stacked in favor of the Aussies
|
| (and out of the goodness of his
heart which is very real), Gilmour had a number of domain
industry leaders sign the hat then donated it to Moniker so
they could auction it off at the Wednesday afternoon live
auction with the proceeds going to the Internet Commerce
Association. When the hat was put on the block the next
day Page Howe (like Gilmour, one of the true nice
guys in this indutsry) paid $5,000 to get it.
ICA
supporter Page Howe (left) placed a winning bid of $5,000
for the autographed Aussie hat donated by Michael Gilmour
(right)
Another major supporter of the ICA, Nat Cohen,
raised another $8,000 for the ICA by donating the
domain RVJ.com that was auctioned off on behalf of
the organization. I'm seeing more and more generous people
like this step up for the good of the industry. Elliot
Silver who won the 2008 Domainers Choice Award in
January for Best
Blog is another guy who has devoted time, money
and domains to the cause. Despite being in the industry a
relatively short time, Silver quickly grasped what is an
stake and he is becoming a real leader in this space. |
After dinner Tuesday night, it was time for one
of the show's highlights, the keynote speech from 1-800-Flowers.com
founder and CEO Jim McCann. His company (also the owner of Flowers.com)
turned the flower industry upside down, unseating long time ruler FTD.com
who now only does about a third of the business 1-800-Flowers does.
McCann is a terrific speaker - down-to-earth, funny and
informative.
McCann was one of the
earliest domain name owners, registering his first domain in
1992! He had started his flower business by buying a
little shop in New York City for $10,000 in
the mid 80's, then bought a near bankrupt order-by-phone
flower company in Texas that turned out to have more
problems than he realized. It took him years to get it
turned around, but in 1991 1-800-Flowers scored a major
breakthrough when an ad campaign on Ted Turner's
cable TV Super Station produced a wave of orders than has
only grown year after year since then. In 1992, realizing
that domain names could serve a function on the Internet
similar to 800 numbers in the offline world, he started acquiring domains relevant to his
business.
Back then he boldly approached the
market leader, FTD, and asked him if they would work with
him. They basically told him to get lost and McCann said
after that he stayed awake nights thinking of ways to knock
them off and he finally succeeded in doing just that. He
said now he
|
Keynote
speaker Jim McCann
Founder of 1-800-Flowers.com |
| stays awake at night worrying
about kids who are thinking about how to knock him off.
Looking around the room McCann said I see an awful of you
guys staring at me - I think I walked into the wrong lion's
den here! I have no doubt that he is right that some of
tomorrow's business giants were sitting in the audience that
night. |
McCann closed with a funny story about a mix-up
at his original flower shop. One of his best friends ordered a
wreath to display at the opening of his new business. Soon after the
opening the friend was on the phone to McCann and was extremely
irate. McCann couldn't understand because he had personally seen the
wreath being made and it was beautiful. He recalled that only one
other wreath was being made at his shop at the time. Within minutes
a call came in from another incensed customer who had ordered a wreath
for a funeral. It turned out that the deliveries got mixed up and a
wreath arrived at his friend's business with a ribbon on it that
said "Rest in Peace". Meanwhile across town,
another wreath was unveiled at the funeral with a ribbon that said
"Good Luck in Your New Location!"
Coming
Up on Page 2
-
The
Official T.R.A.F.F.I.C. Party Towers Over the Las Vegas
Strip
-
Kevin
Ham Reduces People to Tears
-
Live
Domain Auction Rings up $4 Million
-
Disney
World Digs Domains
|
|
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