Industry News Digest: September 2024
- by Ilona K.
Table of contents
Welcome to our monthly Industry News Digest. Explore new online trends, platform features and domain industry news to stay up-to-date. Here’s a summary for September 2024.
Coachella Seizes Domains from Education Event Organizers
The organizers of the American music festival Coachella have won a legal battle over the teachella.net and teachella.org domain names. They claimed that the owner of these domains was using their trademark without permission.
The owner is the Teachella Foundation, a non-profit that organizes events for educators. They once promoted their own festival as “the Coachella of teacher celebrations”.
The name of the Coachella music festival originates from the Coachella Valley in California and is not related to the topic of coaching. The festival organizers considered that the names of the domains belonging to Teachella were similar to theirs and filed a lawsuit.
Carol Stoner, the commissioner of the ADR (Alternative Dispute Resolution) Forum, has decided to transfer the domain to the plaintiff. According to Domain Name Wire, the Forum expert made a mistake, since this issue is rather about trademarks that are being considered in court. The ADR Forum considers cybersquatting cases in accordance with the UDRP. It doesn’t seem that Teachella intentionally wanted to mislead users with its domains or engage in cybersquatting.
Thisthe case is not clear-cut, as it’s difficult to be sure whether Teachella infringed Coachella’s intellectual property rights intentionally. Regardless of the merits of the issue, the dispute continues. So far, Coachella has only won the case because mistakes occurred in the Forum’s work.. This means Teachella still has time to appeal, prove there were no violations on their part and get their domains back.
Why should you care? It’s essential to protect your brand online and part of this is the use of domain names. Attackers may mislead your customers and scam them out of their cash. Also, other companies may employ copy-cat branding to snaffle your customers.
To protect your brand online, a low-cost strategy is to register multiple domains with different extensions and names. Additionally, to identify potential threats to your brand, you should regularly check for new domain names that sound suspiciously similar to your own.
However, you might unintentionally become someone who uses someone else’s trademarks without permission. It’s important to choose a trademark and a domain name carefully. Trying to copy well-known brands can lead to problems, so you might not get a domain in the end.
Source: Domain Name Wire
Sensational Spelling: The New Trend in Branding and Domain Names
John Colascione, an internet marketing expert, has observed a growing trend in using unusual (sensational) spellings for keywords. These spellings may be altered in different ways, such as removing vowels, adding double consonants, or writing the word phonetically.
Some long-standing examples include well-known brands using sensational spellings such as, including Krispy Kreme (krispykreme.com), Weetabix (weetabix.com), Froot Loops (frootloops.com), Flickr (flickr.com), Reddit (reddit.com), Digg (digg.com), Fiverr (fiverr.com), and Tumblr (tumblr.com).
This trend for sensational spelling has become increasingly popular recently. The choice of a domain is a branding issue. Often the company name is used, and all the ‘correctly spelt’ domain names have long been taken. Companies and domainers are actively registering domains with unusual spellings, which can form the basis for new brands.
Why should you care? As the trend becomes more popular, domains with sensational spelling will likely increase in value. When creating a brand, it’s worth considering alternative spellings of the company name and associated term and the corresponding domains available as potential options.
Firstly, this is because sensational brand spellings give you more options for choosing a domain, even in zones like .com. Secondly, it can make your brand unique and memorable to users.
However, when using sensational spellings, be careful not to accidentally turn your original name into typosquatting. This is when a distorted spelling of a well-known internet resource or brand in a domain is used to monetize traffic, mislead visitors, and more. Your brand name shouldn’t be a copy of a well-known brand, even if it’s spelt differently.Use such domains responsibly. At the very least, it’s worth checking them for similarities with existing brands to avoid conflicts and possible accusations of imitating someone else’s trademark.
Source: Strategic Revenue
TikTok Introduces Search Ads Campaign
TikTok is constantly improving its search functionality. The company has just launched the TikTok Search Ads Campaign in the US, allowing advertisers to create ads tailored to specific search queries.
Internal statistics show that 57% of young users prefer TikTok to traditional search engines, posing a potential threat to Google’s supremacy.
Testing has shown that combining Search Ads with In-Feed Ads can increase conversions by 20%. This approach attracts the attention of users who have not previously interacted with ads. Brands can now create ads that match TikTok’s unique search behavior, often combining both intent-driven and spontaneous discovery.
Why should you care? TikTok allows companies to create ads that are tailored to specific search queries. This can help businesses better target their audience, increasing the likelihood of conversions and making their marketing more effective overall.
By using TikTok as part of their advertising strategy, companies have another tool at their disposal to promote their products and services. The variety of platforms available allows you to reach a wider audience, resulting in more successful advertising campaigns.
Source: Search Engine Land
YouTube Unveils ‘Pause Ads’
YouTube has launched a new type of advertising that plays when a user pauses a video. The video platform started testing this feature last year.
During the trial period, ‘pause advertising’ was only available to a limited number of advertisers. However, the format proved to be highly profitable for advertising campaigns, so it was decided to make it available to all users.
Google has noted that YouTube advertising during a pause is less intrusive. Nevertheless, the video service is not planning to stop using traditional commercials before videos.
Oluwa Falodun, the comms manager at YouTube, said that the company has seen a strong reaction from both advertisers and viewers to the new type of advertisement.
Why should you care? When advertising doesn’t annoy users, it has a better chance of being successful and achieving its goals. Advertising during a pause in a YouTube video doesn’t distract users from enjoying the content and doesn’t interrupt the narrative. Therefore, it has a much smaller potential to irritate. Users have time to look at it for as long or as little time as they want.
Source: The Verge
ICANN Announces New Auction Rules for New gTLD Registration
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has announced the details of the auctions for new domain zones in the second round of New gTLD registration. These auctions will determine the owners of new domain zones in cases where multiple applicants have submitted applications for the same digital real estate.
ICANN will ban private auctions, although these were allowed in the first round. The winner can only be determined via an official ICANN auction. If there are other applicants for the same zone, they can ‘switch’ to another zone without having to pay to resubmit their applications. One or several backup zones must be specified in advance in the initial application.
The proceeds from the auction will be used for the New gTLD program and to replenish the ICANN reserve fund.
ICANN believes that the new rules will make domain zones more affordable for owners, providing more opportunities for applicants from the Global South to contribute to the development of the Internet.
Why should you care? The new rules introduced by ICANN could open up more opportunities for small businesses and individuals to register their own domain extensions. The move to ban private auctions and only those officially adjudicated by ICANN, the process of registering domain zones may become fairer and more transparent.
Such an approach could also reduce the cost of registering domain zones for companies, making them more affordable. This could eventually lead to a wider range of new gTLDs and affordable domain prices.
Source: Domain Incite
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