Thursday, May 17th, 2012
Domain Product Placement – the act of purchasing/acquiring an established domain name and using it for a new or existing brand. With the reported $20 million plus offer for Poker.com – CMO’s around the globe have to wondering if this is a tactic to suggest that can really be taken seriously by their CEO.
In December 2006, Russian Standard acquired the domain vodka.com for $3 million. Russian Standard – a brand unknown in the US, thought is would make it easier entering the American market.
The domain Vodka.com now points to Russian Standard?s website.
, which is in English if you enter it that way. Now, having a good domain name sure is important, and I can?t really get that ?wow? feeling over a puny amount such as $3 million. I mean come on, this is the liquor business, they make solid dough and having the number 1 premium name for your niche is worth a lot. Why didn?t Swedish vodka maker Absolut buy it? The answer is simple: They don?t need too, because they have an established brand in Absolut and don?t want to take any focus from it.
But vodka for $3 million? Not for me, I prefer single malt whisky.
Okay the company is always going to be worth more than the domain name, so long as it is not operating in the red. But the recent sales of domains like porn.com for $9.5 Million and vodka.com for $3 million shows how valuable some domain names are.
Poker.com is about to be or just has been sold and the price mentioned was $27 million. Now it would have been nice to buy that one say 10 years ago – the lottery ticket of domain names.
The thing that applies to search here is the fact these buyers value the domains mainly for write in traffic, but also for the impact they know it has in organic results. Even with all things being equal the domain will always be a tipping point.
So craft your domain name well and remember the words are very important.
