Would you drop $185K for .sign?

June 21, 2011 by Dave Haynes

Word Monday from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (aka ICANN) that just about any word out there could be a new top-level domain name – meaning .dumb is just like .com – got me thinking. Until I heard the price tag.

Application fees are $185,000 and that just to apply. ICANN says that fee covers its cost in evaluating the applications, which are apparently done while sipping on 75 year old single malt whisky.

Then there are probably more costs for application preparation, legal, trademark searches, and web-site preparation and maintenance, which could add a few more hundreds of thousands on the tab.

Somebody will drop the money on .bank, .trip and .deal, to name a few. But will anyone scratch together the money for .sign?

Never say never, I suppose, but with all the debate that STILL goes on about what to call this sector, I’m not sure anyone is all that much ahead being able to market digital.sign or networked.sign

As was noted by observers in the wake of the announcement, people are pretty accustomed to dotcom and dotnet. And the only companies in the digital signage ecosystem with the pockets deep enough to drop money on a custom domain already have well-established brands.

If I was a CMO with $185K to spend, I think I’d use it to build the company brand, not a clever domain.

What do you think?