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Now that the Super Bowl game’s “Brand Bowl” is finished, the polls and opinions are popping up everywhere. This year there seems to be a lot more  reactions and buzz bubbling on the internet, more so than in year’s past, thanks in part to social media sites.

Who had the cleverest ads? Who was the funniest?  Facebook, Youtube and Twitter (and maybe even a few old-school water coolers) will be buzzing the rest of today with chatter about both an amazing game and some good and some not so good ads.  Youtube’s voting is still going on and you can catch all the ads that you missed. There were some good ones that got a little chuckle from me, but generally speaking the creative wasn’t outstanding. The companies that advertised on the game and matter most in this little “domain world” were Google and Godaddy. . .

On Twitter a lot of people seemed to like the Google ad but like Jeff Jarvis in this article, I wasn’t really super impressed. It was a clever use of story to demonstrate the product and was classically simple, but really does something so simple as using Google need to be demonstrated?  Jarvis makes a point about France and Football not being a great matchup. It could have been more audience targeted, but CEO Eric Schmidt admitted that the ad wasn’t created for specifically for the Big Game.  Also, doesn’t Google already TOTALLY dominate search ?  I get that it’s a great branding opportunity and the ad endeared many to the brand, but Google has a lot of other offerings to showoff to that the average guy on the couch may not have a clue about.  Did they just release a phone or something ?

Overall, Google winning the love of most viewers is okay by me and it’s surreal to think that what some are calling the #1 advertisement is for a “new media” brand that has chipped away the base of “traditional media” revenues and completely changed the advertising landscape.  To me, Google’s ad running on the Super Bowl gives the idea of Super Bowl advertising more legitimacy.

Most disappointing to me (and to several others) was the Godaddy commercials.  Ok, we get it Godaddy. You like to have controversy and you like to have your ads pulled so you can get more PR before the game, but really come on. It’s done.   It used to be impressive to me that a domain company had the money and guts to invest in expensive Super Bowl ads, but I’m over it.  Godaddy released several ads this year. One ad got cut and two that didn’t get cut made it on air during the game (one posted below).  Personally, I would have preferred the cut ad. It does a better job explaining the product and isn’t all about popping open shirts.

While I sat in my comfy chair watching the game and surfing on my phone, my twitter stream filled with negative reactions to Godaddy ads, but suddenly Bob Parson’s chimes in with a “72% surveyed say GoDaddy.com #sb44 ads were hilarious.” tweet. What !?  Who are these people taking this survey? Even the 4 person team on twitter @godaddyguy even chimed in saying they were having a hard time keeping up. This is where you earn your keep I guess guys.

Back to the ads.  The premise for these ads is basically pretend to show some boobies at the end and leave them hanging with ” See More at GoDaddy.com” . . .and I’m sure MANY went hoping to see more.  Like one blogger points out “Not only do these cliffhanger endings generate buzz and capture the audience’s attention, it also gets people to actually visit GoDaddy.com to see what its all about.”  Only problem is, like crying wolf, you can only pull this “trick” once.  The viewer doesn’t get anything special when they go to the site.

You got the viewer to your site with the same “1 horse trick”.  Now what?  The viewer thinks “I went to the site and I didn’t get what I wanted”.  They now remember you and your brand as being a company that teases them into thinking they were getting a “free porn show” . . . oh and maybe remembers you sell domain names.  As Brian Clark from Copyblogger.com said, “Thanks GoDaddy, but your target audience already knows where the best porn on the web is“.

Fear not though, Godaddy is ready to give you the chance to show them how to do it better.  In a similar fashion to other brands before them, Godaddy is holding a contest and awarding prizes for the best ads.  Hopefully they have judges that aren’t  the same 72% that voted in the previously mentioned poll.

If anyone has a camera, a ski boat and a pet shark, I’ve got a good idea for a commercial :)

(c) 2009 DomainNameNews.com

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When I read the news today from Oversee and SnapNames stating that an employee had been bidding on domains, I knew. . . I knew who it was. I didn’t want to hear it but I knew. Like many of my colleagues who frequented SnapNames auctions over the years, the first name that came to mind was “Halvarez” .  To confirm from SnapNames sources later that it was indeed Nelson Brady really was more disheartening.

For those that never worked directly with SnapNames or Nelson, he was the kind of guy that you could email day or night and he’d respond almost instantaneously. He was the kind of guy that you wanted working on the other end of the phone; fast, courteous and intelligent.  To find out now that he was lying and betraying not only me, but everyone that he worked with leaves me speechless.  It left a fellow employee I spoke with at SnapNames speechless as well.  With such a small organization, I can only imagine the feeling of betrayal.

This is a tough day for Oversee. The aftermath of this news will leave a cloud of doubt over SnapNames for years to come.  This isn’t the only problem that this issue created though. Every Tom, Dick and Harry with a conspiracy theory about any domain company will come out of the woodwork now claiming “I told you so” or bringing up more cases of strange behavior that they believe could only be attributed to a nefarious company or individual.

We’re already seeing new theories today with posts in DNN comments citing other SnapNames users such as “Vaxis” may have also shills (most insiders know this was Kevin Ham’s user name).   Other conspiracies popping up include that the company knew about this and Brady is being thrown under the bus. The domain business has always had an unusually high amount of conspiracy theorists, but a conspiracy being proven true is harmful enough to beginning casting a shadow of doubt big enough to cover all in the domain industry.

Take the quote from Michael Arrington, former CEO of Pool.com (another expiring name aftermarket with conspiracy rumors of their own) comment on the Tech Crunch coverage of the SnapNames story :

Anyone who doesn’t know how dirty the domain name business is just doesn’t know the domain name business.

Arrington has taken plenty of stabs at the domain space since his departure, calling ICANN corrupt and domainers equivalent to the mafia.  This time though the dirty laundry is out and you’d have to say his name calling seems justifiable. Arrington’s mainstream audience which likely knows little about domains now gets to read about the confirmation of how dirty it can be and how right Michael can be as well.

The domain aftermarket business needs to take a step back and really think about the things that went haywire here and what exactly should be done.  SnapNames had internal policies prohibiting this (as do other auction houses), but the reality is that no internal policy is going to keep a rogue employee with dollar signs in their eyes from going after that “golden goose”.  Employees at domain aftermaket and parking companies deal with multi-millionaire clients and I’m sure the lure of the easy buck is hard to resist.  If someone wants to bid on domains and the policy says they can’t, they’ll find a way around it.   Policies like this won’t prevent it, they’ll just slow the person down or create a situation where the employee becomes more “resourceful” and goes further “underground”.

It’s not hard for any employee to create a new identity and run everything through that identity or hire someone to bid on domains on your behalf ?  This becomes an extremely difficult policy for a company to enforce, but clearly one that needs to be addressed.  We’re relying on the company to police itself in these cases.  It took Oversee over 4 years to figure this out so what does that say about policing their own company

The industry needs to get a grip on this stuff . We need a code of conduct, outside audits or some sort of layer of trust built in to these auctions.  The accusations of shill bidding are not new. Every auction house has been accused of it before.  Now it’s real.  We need audits and policies that insure that everything is being run right.  If we don’t I think you can rest assured that someone else will step in and create rules for us or settle these issues with lawsuits.

Let’s get it together domain companies!

(c) 2009 DomainNameNews.com

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Guest contributor Zak Muscovitch is a domain name lawyer, based in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. He has been practising domain name law for ten years. Go to http://www.DNattorney.com and http://www.muscovitch.com.

Privacy Protection for domainers who have legitimate portfolios is a little like a burka on a bikini model.

Although keeping one’s domain name registration details private is an attractive concept and may even help wary registrants avoid imparting too much information to prospective domain name dispute claimants, in my humble opinion, the practice is a business killer in the .CA realm. As a domain name lawyer I can rarely find out who owns what to try and put together deals. I can’t trace the history of domains to perform due diligence. I can’t identify connections between web sites and domain owners. It stymies me. And if it stymies me from doing .CA deals, that means that it is hurting business for .CA owners , who dont need any more negative factors affecting the Canadian market than they already have. Sure I can sometimes use other methods, but the utility of domaintools.com whois archives is lessening as time goes on, because it carries no new information for most .ca’s since all recent records are privacy protected.

By way of background, CIRA, the Canadian Internet Registration Authority made privacy protection a “default setting” [ed. for individual registrants], and considered this move a leadership position in the Internet world. And I did too. I am a big fan of privacy and thought that CIRA’s privacy protection policy was extraordinarily progressive and consumer-friendly. But I was wrong. It kills business. Imagine a stock exchange where there are no listings….That is what has happened here. And the benefit of privacy is nil for a domainer who is trying to hide, because there a CDRP [ed:.CA Dispute Resolution Policy] reveals your identity anhow….and hiding can actually encourage a CDRP…So it gets you nowhere other than to avoid someone like me finding out what domain name you own so I can easily contact you and know who you are, to make a deal.

In the Canadian .CA realm, domains are extraordinarily underdeveloped so we need all the contact and attention that we can get – not privacy! We dont want a marketplace with hidden vendors. We want a marketplace with vendors showing their wares off in public and making themselves available to bargain with each other.

(c) 2009 DomainNameNews.com

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Elliot Silver has been digging through the filings on the NASDAQ stock exchange and noticed that Insure.com (NSDQ:NSUR) has sold their domain name and company name for $16 million USD. The company will rebrand to “Life Quotes”. They originally paid $1,600,000 for the domain name in 2001. If this had been the domain name only this could have been a one of a kind record sale, but according to PaidContent.org, the sale included “related media assets”, which have yet to be explained in more detail.

The buyer was QuinStreet, the company that also is still in the process of buying Internet.com from WebMediaBrands (NSQ:WEBM).

Phil Perillo, CFO [ed. of Insure.com], remarked, “This transaction, which calls for a $15 million cash payment now and a $1.0 million payment in 365 days, significantly increases our shareholders’ equity and stockpile of cash. As a result of this asset sale, the Company now has approximately $24 million of cash and investments, no debt, stockholders’ equity of $31.4 million and a book value of approximately $4.98 per share.”

Read the full press release after the jump.

Insure.com Announces $16 Million Asset Sale, Continuation of Business Under Life Quotes Brand Name

DARIEN, Ill., Oct. 9 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — Insure.com, Inc. (Nasdaq: NSUR) announced today that it has sold its Insure.com brand name and related media assets for $16 million in cash to QuinStreet, Inc. Insure.com, Inc. (the Company) intends to change its corporate name to Life Quotes, Inc. and will continue its business under its Life Quotes and Consumer Insurance Guide brand names. The Company will retain all of its remaining balance sheet assets, national brokerage contracts with 25 leading life insurance companies, 50 fully licensed insurance agents, call center operations, customer and prospect lists, and nearly all of its current inbound affiliate and traffic partnerships.

The Company acquired the Insure.com name and website for $1.6 million in December 2001. Revenue from this asset sale transaction will be recorded as an extraordinary, one-time gain in the fourth quarter of 2009. The Company does not anticipate paying any federal income taxes on this gain because it has a current federal tax loss carry forward of $49 million.

“We have sold our Insure.com name and specified website content in a significant cash transaction that we think is in the best long-term interest of our shareholders,” remarked Robert Bland, chairman and CEO of the Company. “This transaction has other benefits to our shareholders and employees in that it will allow us to focus on our brokerage operation and insurance marketing businesses. As a result of this transaction, we are projecting reduced revenues of approximately 10-15 percent with increased marketing expenses for the next 2-6 quarters as we rebuild under a new brand name and move from a content-based website to a transaction-based website.”

Phil Perillo, CFO, remarked, “This transaction, which calls for a $15 million cash payment now and a $1.0 million payment in 365 days, significantly increases our shareholders’ equity and stockpile of cash. As a result of this asset sale, the Company now has approximately $24 million of cash and investments, no debt, stockholders’ equity of $31.4 million and a book value of approximately $4.98 per share.”

The Company’s board of directors voted unanimously in favor of this asset sale and intends to hire an investment banker and review all of its options for use of the transaction proceeds, which the Company intends to return to shareholders in some fashion.

About Insure.com

Originally founded in 1984 as Quotesmith Corporation, Insure.com owns and operates a comprehensive consumer information service and companion insurance brokerage service that caters to the needs of self-directed insurance shoppers. Visitors to the company’s Web site, www.insure.com, are able to obtain free, instant car insurance quotes, instant life insurance quotes, home, business and health insurance quotes from leading insurers and have the freedom to buy online or by phone from any company shown. Insure.com is home to hundreds of originally authored articles on consumer insurance topics and provides free insurance decision-making tools that are not available from any other single source. Insure.com generates revenues from receipt of industry-standard commissions, including back-end bonus commissions and volume-based contingent bonus commissions that are paid by participating insurance companies. Shares of the Company’s common stock trade on the Nasdaq Capital Market under the symbol NSUR.

SOURCE Insure.com, Inc.

(c) 2009 DomainNameNews.com

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Every domainer has heard the story of how Kevin Ham built a $300 million empire - particularly how he profited from the millions of people who accidentally type “.cm” (the country code TLD for Cameroon) instead of “.com” when searching for a website.

And now that Cameroon’s ccTLD registrations are open to the public, domain auction houses are targeting domainers and typosquaters alike in an effort to sell high-end generic .CM domains for hefty prices.

In Rick Latona’s premium .CM auction, which ended July 14, some of the most sought after .CM domains such as cars.cm, jobs.cm, and loan.cm were sold for prices ranging between $5,000 to $35,500. And beyond that, the registration fees for .CM domains are expected to start around $350 for 2 years.

So were these domains worth it? And are other .CM domains worth registering? I say no, and here are two reasons why:

.CM Is Intended For TLD Typosquatters

While generic keyword-based domain names will always have SEO benefits, there’s no getting around the fact that .CM domains are meant for TLD typosquatters (unless you own a business in Cameroon). Only 2-4% of Cameroon’s population has Internet access and with registration fees estimated to be around $175/year, there are many cheaper alternatives for domainers who want legitimate keyword-based URLs. So unless you are intending to benefit from TLD typosquatting, there’s no use in owning a .CM domain.

But what’s worse is that NameJet isn’t even trying to hide that fact. The official NameJet .CM domain order page is advertising trademark infringing domains such as Skype.cm, Nike.cm, Volvo.cm, and Amozon.cm as “Popular .CM Preorders”, and openly listing two of the main benefits of owning a .CM domain as “securing natural traffic to your site” and “protecting your brand to avoid any misleading uses of your name”.

On the flip side, they might as well point out that the benefits could also include “taking natural traffic away from the intended site” and “infringing on another brand by misleading Internet users with an almost-exact domain”.

The Revenue Won’t Be As Much As You Think

After hearing about the success Kevin Ham had with .CM domains, some might think that .CM is a sure-fire approach to making money online. Besides, much like 2006/2007  there are still millions of people accidentally typing in “.cm” instead of “.com” periodically - and it’s perfectly legal to own .CM domains as long as they’re not infringing on any trademarks.

Even so, Kevin Ham had almost every .CM domain putting pennies in his pocket. Unfortunately, even the richest domainers targeting .CM would be lucky to grab a couple hundred premium generic domains at a cost of $175/year for registration fees. And at this price it would be tough math to figure out how much traffic the domain will receive, how much revenue it can generate, and whether or not would be profitable over time. Plus, keep in mind that PPC revenue is down and the best generic domains will come at a cost as they’ll only be available by auction.

Word is that there are quite a few previous owners of premium .CM domains that were disappointed with the results. Take it for what it’s worth.

That’s my two cents…what do you think? Are you going to be going for any .CM domains?

(c) 2009 DomainNameNews.com

DomainConvergence | August 12-13, 2009 | Toronto, ON, Canada
Keynote speakers: The Castello Brothers on "Branding your Domain"
Christian Heilmann, Developer Evangelist, Yahoo!