Techcrunch is reporting today that Yahoo is going to spend a whopping $100,000,000 on a new marketing campaign centered around the catchphrase, “It’s You!” In typical Yahoo fashion, they did not spend any of the $100 MILLION to acquire the rights to the domain name ItsYou.com, which is owned by my friend Gregg Ostrick (and has been registered since 2002 – back when Yahoo was… well… you know).
Now Yahoo is heavily promoting, “it’s you” to millions of people around the world in a variety of different channels. Of course, they are still directing people to Yahoo.com, but people tend to add .com to everything, and I would expect “it’s you” to be no different than any others. Well, the difference is that Yahoo will be spending millions and millions of dollars on the catchphrase it’s you, and they didn’t even buy this domain name – just in case.
Yahoo is another company whose stock I am very glad to have sold.
Greg has a lot of domains… Most of them are made up and worthless (probly around 20k) but this one is the exception…. Thanks to Y!
@ Mike
He does have a lot of names, but you’d be surprised at how many times I’ve seen his name… Puggles.com for example… many others… such as SimplyWheels.com – when Hertz actively promotes SimplyWheelz.com… lots more.
No doubt, he’s been around for a while and amassed quiet a portfolio but definitely hit or miss big time…
He was liquidating recently some 10k – 15k names, I spent probably an hour looking through his lists with a bunch of scanners / tools and couldn’t even find one decent name.. lol ! Pass….
Well… when he’s had hits, he’s certainly had a few home runs that paid for all of the others 🙂
It’s you?? I thought its (.)me
@ Elliot, Interesting post. Do you think the marketing people, instead of view a domain as an investment, feel they would dilute their brand if they develop too many domains?
I’d be very curious to see you follow this up with some traffic stats from before and after for the domain. It’s so easy to dismiss all of this as hot air without any hard evidence. But there are so few circumstances where it would be so easy to bring out that hard evidence like this.
Have to disagree with the idea Elliot, the name isnt important as long as they say yahoo.com at the end of the add. Whats new ion its you is Yahoo and a service they offer, not a name/space to be created.
Josh
You know all about direct nav traffic. Don’t you think there are going to be thousands of visits going to this site simply because of Yahoo’s campaign? If that happens, wouldn’t it have been smart to buy it before the campaign? Of course if the price was $500k then it wouldn’t make sense from a numbers POV, but it would be hard to turn down $50-100k for a name like this as the owner, and $50k for a name that could get tens of thousands of targeted visitors isn’t such a bad price.
BTW, I have no idea about any of the numbers… I wouldn’t expect Gregg to talk about it publicly.
Hey Elliot. You’re right. It would make sense for Yahoo to purchase this domain sense their whole purpose is to ‘raise more brand awareness’.
I’ve tried selling similar ‘keyword tagline domains’ to companies to no avail.
I can agree, yes they should have wanted to own it if the price was right, yes I am sure some will type in the phrase…BUT we have to assume those lost souls never go to Yahoo in the end.
What I am saying is that a lot of commercials, companies, new products etc have ” catch phrases ” or tags and some times I have to admit I do not see the real benefit in purchasing them, that’s all.
For me in the end it is how close the catch prase or slogan is to the product/service, in this case it doesnt exist yet, maybe Greg will stil get a call 🙂
Most likely people will try and google the term ItsYou to find out what the ad is anyways…
Best of luck to Gregg!
Gregg has one of the best IDN portfolios around… He is your ruler wannadevelop.com