Nominet

Director, Marketing and Communications, CIRA

CIRA, the Canadian Internet Registration Authority manages the .ca ccTLD, and we are pleased to see that the global market for domain names is a healthy growing business. I anticipate that growth will continue for the foreseeable future, but as the market matures growth will continue to soften and the current products and industry structures will change.

There are significant market forces on the horizon that will provide both challenges and opportunities for industry incumbents and potential new players. The industry is evolving and facing changes within the domain business and the broader digital environment that will disrupt the current domain ecosystem.

In terms of the future, a significant number of changes are happening that affect the domain industry. There are two types of changes: those happening within the domain ecosystem and those happening outside it.

The biggest change happening within the domain industry will be introduction of the new gTLD program in 2012. This change will affect all those in the domain community (registries, registrars and registrants) and Internet users in general. This will undoubtedly drive significant disruption in the current domain business model.

I believe there are three main implications of the introduction of new gTLDs:

• The new gTLD program will significantly increase the number of domain choices for registrants in the global market. The registries responsible for managing domains will find a market that is more complex and competitive.
• The existing registry and registar relationship will change. The level of competition for access to registrants will increase resulting in a shift in focus from the registry to registrars.
• The net result of these changes is that registries will need to effectively invest in marketing programs to create and/or maintain product differentiation, access to markets and demand.

There are also several changes happening outside the domain industry that are affecting the business. The advent of more sophisticated browsers and disruptive technologies (e.g. barcodes, geotagging and URL shorteners) are providing Internet users with more options when navigating the web.  The implication of these emerging technologies is that they are challenging the long held supremacy of domain names for web navigation.

The Canadian picture

.CA has experienced strong growth – around 20% – over the past year and I believe that a large-scale transformation we have undertaken in the last two years has had a significant impact on demand:

• .CA undertook a significant rebranding that contemporized it while leveraging .CA’s key brand attributes (Canadian, safe, trusted and secure) in all communication.
• .CA undertook an extensive renewal of the product itself. During this initiative the product’s policies, rules and technology platform – were fundamentally updated to ensure that getting and managing a .CA was easier for both the registrant and registrar communities.
• An extensive advertising program was designed and implemented targeting potential registrants and the influencer communities that recommend domains to their customers. A more proactive and supportive stance was taken with CIRA’s channel partners. Advertising support was provided, partner collateral was created and a more effective sales funnel was implemented.
• In addition, CIRA launched the Impact Awards for .CA domains. The purpose of this award program was to celebrate the organizations that use .CA’s to make a difference in the communities they serve.

All of these programs have helped to position .CA as the preferred choice of Canadians.