What do big companies that use brand protection company’s to register and buy domain names spend to protect, acquire, register and renew domain names?
WikiLeaks.org published invoices from MarkMonitor to Sony, documents (PDF)
In those invoices published by WikiLeaks , MarkMonitor.com billed Sony $1,000 several times for a “Domain Acquisition Fee” for domain names that are not owned by Sony.
WOF.com, is for an example (page 60 in the pdf) a domain Sony does not own, nor has ever owned, according to whois records, yet was charged $1,000 for a “Domain Acquisition Fee”.
Since Sony was charged $1,000 for a “Domain Acquisition Fee” it seems MarkMonitor, at that time (2013), was charging Sony $1,000 to attempt to acquire a domain name, even if they were not successful.
Of course we do not know what the fee would have been if MarkMonitor.com were successful in acquiring the domain name.
Since the Sony/MarkMonitor invoices posted on Wikileaks are dated in 2013/2014, these fees could have went up or down and could be different depending on the client/volume.
Another domain name that MarkMonitor charged $1K “domain acquisition fee” was in a July 2013 invoice on page 18 and was for Interactive.la, which Sony did not acquire nor ever owned according to whois records.. Interestingly, the domain is available now on Afternic for $5,900 Buy it Now. I would love to know what Sony’s budget for the domain was, since they spent $1K to try to acquire it but did not according to whois records.
MarkMonitor, according to the invoices released by WikiLeaks.com, charged Sony $17 per .Com/.Net domain name registration or renewal , but some ccTLD & ccSLD domain extensions were priced substantially higher. (below)
- Sony’s invoice from MarkMonitor just for the month of January 2014 was a whopping $48,305.00.
- Sony’s invoice from MarkMonitor just for the month of July 2013 was $35,274.00.
- Sony’s invoice from MarkMonitor just for the month of September 2013 was $41,133,16.00.
That January 2014 invoice was 65 pages long and included registrations, renewals and domain transfers (same cost as renewal/registration).
Each page had 20 items, with the last page having 11, in total: 1,291 items.
According to DomainTools.com, Sony currently owns 10,339 domain names associated with just the one email address of spe_hostmaster@spe.sony.com (they may use other email addresses for Sony owned Domains). We don’t know how many domain names Sony owned by at the time of the invoices.
You do the math.
That January invoice is over $48,000 for what appears to be around 10% of the domain names Sony owns.
According to the information posted by Wikileaks, MarkMonitor billed Sony (2014 invoice) registration or renewal fees for ccTLD’s & ccSLD’s as much as 15X more, compared to what the largest domain name registrar in the world GoDaddy.com charges currently for registrations or renewals in the same extensions (We used EuroDNS for domain extension not offered by Godaddy):
TLD | MarkMonitor 2013/2014 | GoDaddy Current (unless stated)
- .com.mx | $100 | $9.99
- .de | $45 | $7.99
- .ch | $181.50 | $14.99
- .ru | $150 | $14.99
- .at | $199 | $23.99
- .tv | $75 | $39.99
- .com.uy | $450 | $183.51 (EuroDNS)
- .pt | $275 | $37.14 (EuroDNS)
- .com.pt | $275 | $37.14 (EuroDNS)
- .be | $68 | $11.99
- .it | $85 | $12.99
- .com.bo | $550 | $161.66 (EuroDNS)
- .xxx | $150 | $99.99
- .co | $85 | $2.99 1st yr (Special Promo)
So when a Big Company complains about how much they spend on domain names, it looks like they spend a ton.
Super information, Jamie.
Oh, for Pete’s sake.
Why don’t these large companies just create a domain acquisition and protection department?
Really.
In the long run, it would be cheaper and more efficient to bring in an expert and pay him or her a decent salary.
As usual, Jamie, great research and writing.
🙂
$60 for a .CA renewal, as I always like to joke “I’m in the wrong business”, oh wait, I *am* in this business.
$150 for a “modifcation” on a .UK, is that like a whois update?
This is why I never use MarkMonitor 🙂
LOL, only few lucky ones get that invitation.
Very interesting data. I’ve always wondered about MarkMonitor’s pricing. It’s probably custom set per client, though.
Amazing information here – Just been looking through and here’s how they acquired http://www.whitehousedown.com for $4000 –
https://search.wikileaks.org/sony/docs03_02/Finance/SPI/Finance%20-%20Interactive/AP%20Invoices/Internet%20Escrow%20whitehousedown.com%20domain%20purchase.pdf
Thanks for the tip. Wish it would be that easy to get data on most of the sales.
$1,000 just for trying to acquire a domain name?!! Somebody at Sony who approves these invoices needs to get educated about domaining and domain fees in general. They can save tons of money.
In an age where anyone with an internet connection, a little information, and an opinion can become a journalist, you should check your facts before making assumptions and jumping to conclusions. As recent attacks have shown, price is not everything. There are myriad reasons why companies use a corporate domain registrar rather than a retail registrar, security and service being at the top of the list.
@Toby,
You haven’t mentioned any facts that Jamie forgot to check.
If people value security, great. That’s a value, not a fact. And if they think that MarkMonitor and similar companies are alone in offering security, that’s an opinion. Again, not a fact.
It’s called “padding the bill” and socking it to the customer.
A large company would do better to create a digital property department that acquires, manages, defends, and secures corporate domains.
In-house management means better control of both personnel and finances.
Nice comment 😉
Nice find.
Nat Cohen should charge a 50% commission on what the Markmonitor idiots are charging their customers just for trying to talk to Nat.
@johnBerryhill
I started building an API, in conjunction with IBM Watson, to put these obsolete IP guardians out of biz. These are just the charges incurred by Sony Pictures for “movie properties”, as billed by MarkMonitor. Most of Sony’s IP assets, including domains, are in the tech arena. — so we can conservatively estimate $120 K per month, based on revenues of Sony’s divisions.
@Jen
I’ve launched startups that became big, with all legal and IP bootstrapping.Once you have lots of shareholders, all changes and bills get padded. Management goes into Cover Your Ass mode, to the detriment of the Company, but to enhance the coffers of the professional service providers.
Cost of doing biz in these here USA.
My son, who freelances, faced this as well.
One of his clients told him to pad his bill because no one would take him seriously if he charged too little.
It’s insane!
Two ways of looking at it. I think $17 to manage sony.com is a pretty good price considering the amount of liability MM is taking on by doing it. Bit more risk than managing a Mom & Pop site for $10 at GoDaddy.
And it isn’t the domains they don’t buy that they make their money on, it’s the ones they do.
Their fattest margins are in ccTLDs where they “overcharge” the clients 90%+. But that’s the game.
Maybe somebody should ask MarkMonitor.com to comment on this, about what benefits they give the customer to justify this higher price. I have no idea, but maybe there is a real reason.
usefull information
Quite interesting, but sometimes the whole truth is behind the wall. If they DO have a long and profitable cooperation which have brought them millions, these monthly expenses (really for nothing) is just nothing comparing to the whole profit.
“brand protection company’s to register”
‘COMPANIES’ Jamie.
In English, ‘s is possessive. The company’s good name or the company’s grammatical elegance, being two examples.
regards
Carl