Mediapost.com just published a story tonight about San Diego-based ad shop, AdEase which they say has grown into a company with 35 employees and $20 million-plus in annualized billings.
According to the story it is remaking itself as a cause-focused agency. As part of the makeover it is changing its name to Civilian.
Also as part of the redo, the agency is adopting a .agency domain name.
“Google added .agency as a Generic Top Level Domain name option about six months ago. “
“The agency believes that it is the first, or at least one of the first ad shops to utilize the new domain category.”
“The shop’s cause-focused endeavors have increased over a period of years. Agency founder and CEO Stacey Nelson Smith calls the makeover effort “a case of brand identification catching up to agency identity.”
The domain name Civilian.Agency is the domain of the rebranded site.
Of course Donuts not Google is company that operates the .agency registry.
The domain is registered under privacy at Godaddy and looks to have been registered on October 25th of this year.
As for as being one the first “ad shops to utilize the new domain category” I don’t know about that but there are over 16,000 .agency domain names registered according to ntldstats.com, making it the 38th most registered new gTLD.
Interesting to see Civilian.agency and CivilianAgency.com both registered during 2014 within 2 months of one another and developed separately.
Compare Adease.com with http://www.Civilian.Agency. I still feel the former is easier to remember and communicate in word of mouth.
Since this post I am now thinking of registering CentralIntelligence.Agency
😛
I love how they they credit Google as their motivation… YET… if you search ‘civilian’ in Google you will be met with a huge information box that pushes all other content almost below the fold. Once they figure that out, they will have to place an ad for the keyword at .23 cents per click. (Search: ‘Symphony’ for example) Even with a 10% CTR thats a minimum ad spend of $15k annually. I guess their SEO specialist took off during that meeting marked ‘branding brainstorm’. Yes, I am sure they will target other keywords… but then what’s the point of owning Civilian.Agency when it’s significantly harder to communicate to customers that are going to say, “what is a .agency?” Ba, da, ba-ba-baa, not lovin it.
Something tells me Donuts doesn’t care that Google got the mention, as long as people are talking about .agency 🙂
To their credit, they have built a substantial business. Trying something new may yield benefits. I do like that they chose an extension that aligns with their identity as an advertising & marketing agency.
95% of there traffic will go to the .com which they were smart in purchasing from hugedomains. I have seen it time and time again, unless you own the market including all exentions, being the first or creative words backwards so while this trying to be unique or first is maybe good press, its bad business but they at least did it right getting both access points. Otherwise, I would be buying the .com and making money from there hard work.. nice pick up article mike..c
The Donuts got credited now.
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