From .academy to .zone: An Analysis of the New TLD Land Rush

The com, net, and org TLDs contain roughly 150 million registered domains, and domain registrants often have a difficult time finding a desirable and available name. In 2013, ICANN began delegation of a new wave of TLDs into the Domain Name System with the goal of improving meaningful name choice for registrants. The new rollout resulted in over 500 new TLDs in the first 18 months, nearly tripling the number of TLDs. Previous rollouts of small numbers of new TLDs have resulted in a burst of defensive registrations as companies aggressively defend their trademarks to avoid consumer confusion. This paper analyzes the types of domain registrations in the new TLDs to determine registrant behavior in the brave new world of naming abundance. We also examine the cost structures and monetization models for the new TLDs to identify which registries are profitable. We gather DNS, Web, and WHOIS data for each new domain, and combine this with cost structure data from ICANN, the registries, and domain registrars to estimate the total cost ofthe new TLD program. We find that only 15% of domains in the new TLDs show characteristics consistent with primary registrations, while the rest are promotional, speculative, or defensive in nature; indeed, 16% of domains with NS records do not even resolve yet, and 32% are parked. Our financial analysis suggests only half of the registries have earned enough to cover their application fees, and 10% of current registries likely never will solely from registration revenue.