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August 27, 2012

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Here's the The Lowdown from DN Journal,
updated daily
to fill you in on the latest buzz going around the domain name industry. 

The Lowdown is compiled by DN Journal Editor & Publisher Ron Jackson.

Facebook Threat to Domains Wanes as Ad Execs Show Diminishing Interest in Facebook vs. Rest of the Web

During its meteoric rise a lot of people predicted that the popularity of Facebook would lower the value of premium domain names. With Facebook membership rising into the hundreds of millions the domain doomsayers reasoned that companies would spend more time and money marketing their products on Facebook than through their own websites. I never believed that as it made no sense to me for a company to want their own brands taking a back seat to the Facebook brand. 

Now, there's no doubt that a lot of short-sighted marketing people have fallen into the Facebook trap (Owen Frager just 

Image from Bigstock

wrote about it yesterday after going to the movies and seeing a bunch of corporate ads promoting a Facebook URL rather than the company's own site. That's not shooting yourself in the foot, that is blowing both legs off at the kneecaps! 

The good news is that most ad execs are quickly wising up. A new survey of 2,200 brand marketers and advertising executives conducted by 33Across showed that in just the past three months there has been a major shift in sentiment regarding how much time to spend focusing on Facebook vs. the Rest of the Web (ROW). Joe Mandese broke it down in an article at Online Media Daily noting that in the latest survey (for June 2012) 82% said the rest of the web was more important than Facebook- an 8% jump in just one quarter from the 74% who felt that way in March 2012.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The survey asked respondents to select one of five options that best described how much time they devoted to Facebook vs. the Rest of the Web - 20:80 (20% to Facebook, 80% to the ROW), 40:60, 50:50, 60:40 or 80:20 (the latter being 80% to Facebook, 20% to the ROW).  In March 2012 58% selected 20:80, but by June that number had zoomed to 71% now saying the vast majority of their time (80%) goes to the rest of the web. In March, 16% of the respondents said they split their time 50/50 between Facebook and the ROW. In June only 4% divided their time evenly. 

On the flip side, there are a few lost sheep out there who not only haven't figured it out, but are wandering further off course. In March 0% (yes ZERO) said they devoted 80% of their time to Facebook,  but in June 4% said they have shifted 80% of their time to Facebook. If I was in charge of corporate advertising I would want to find out if any of those 4% are on my team working to build someone else's brand (Facebook's) rather than my own. 

Image from Bigstock

That's certainly not to say a company shouldn't use social media to promote their company - of course they should. You want to promote your business everywhere you can but you don't want to lose your identity in the process. It looks like more marketers are embracing the obvious which bodes well for domain names and websites continuing to play an indispensable role in online marketing.

(Posted July 5, 2012) 


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