ccTLD

Along with Go Daddy’s repositioning of .LA domain names, the company is also hosting an auction of .LA domain names. Individual auctions are concluding within the next few hours.

There are just under 275 domain names included in the auction, and the domain names I searched appear to be registered to a company called “Dot LA Marketing LLC.” You can read more about the company and the Go Daddy partnership in a Los Angeles Daily News article published a little over a week ago. According to Go Daddy’s Paul Nicks, “GoDaddy is running the auction and does not have any ownership in the domain names.”

The minimum bid on the domain auctions is $100. The domain name with the highest bid currently is Simply.LA, which has a high bid of $560. At the time of this post, the five auctions with the highest bids are:

You’ve probably read about the repositioning of Laos’ .LA ccTLD extension by  Go Daddy. If not, check out the Wall St. Journal press release  for more details. In short, Godaddy will be marketing .LA domain names to a Los Angeles audience and selling the domain names for $39.99/year. I think this is interesting and will almost be like a test case or practice for other geographic TLDs such as .NYC.

As someone who is interested in marketing, I am most interested in seeing how the registrar plans to market these domain names further. Some things I will be watching for include:

• Will they undertake off-line marketing efforts to make the public aware of these domain names?
• Will their marketing efforts target to people outside of Los Angeles?
• How will the company make small businesses and consumers aware of the extension and then help with adoption?
• Is this a one time effort or will it be ongoing?
• How much of an impact will the repositioning have on total registrations and developed websites?

There are many questions to be answered, and I think the learnigs from this brand repositioning will help guide the company for when the new gTLDs roll out either later this year or shortly thereafter.  I also think other TLD registries and registrars will be closely monitoring the company’s efforts. If they aren’t, they might want to put it on their radar. Perhaps it is much ado about nothing, but it could be important.

Aside from marketing interests, as a domain investor, I am also interested in seeing how this marketing effort will impact the market. Essentially, this may be somewhat of a microcosm with respect to gTLD extensions. If it takes hold in Los Angeles, I imagine other markets and verticals could see the same. Perhaps it will be confusing to consumers, and that will also be something to monitor. Ultimately, if consumers adopt .LA en masse (unlikely in my opinion) it will be something we all should note because it could be the same with other TLDs.

The repositioning of .LA by Go Daddy will be interesting for me to observe, and it will be interesting to see what happens in that market (if anything).