In this webinar, Chris Niemi, Manager of Strategic Initiatives at Markmonitor, sits down with Crews Gore, President of the Brand Registry Group, to discuss applying for a .Brand gTLD. Watch the webinar or read the transcript to learn about:
- What you need to know about .Brand gTLDs
- How to have internal conversations and create .Brand champions at your organization
- ICANN Policy and Process updates relevant to the .Brand Program
- .Brand use cases
- Common generics, Singluar/Plurals, IDNs, and other considerations when applying for your .Brand
- Application and ad hoc fees
- New gTLD Program timelines
- And more!
Editor’s Note: This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.
Introduction to the “.Brand gTLD Applicants: What Should I Do in 2025?” Webinar
Speaking: Natalie Brownell
Hi, everyone. We appreciate you being here and thank you for joining us for our webinar, “.Brand gTLD Applicants: What Should I Do in 2025?”
Today’s presenters are two knowledgeable gentlemen with decades of experience in the domain industry. I have the great pleasure of introducing Chris Niemi, Manager of Strategic Initiatives at Markmonitor. He’s been with the organization for over 20 years and has been involved with ICANN’s New gTLD Program since 2011. He provides thought leadership about the program and .Brand top-level domains and delivers services and support for Markmonitor’s .Brand offerings.
I’m also honored to introduce Crews Gore. He has been involved with the domain industry for 10 years and is the President of the Brand Registry Group and Director of Domain Names and Brand Protection at Fox. He oversees the management of the domain portfolio and brand protection and leads the .Fox registry.
Now, I will go ahead and pass it off to Chris as we dive into the webinar.
Webinar Agenda
Speaking: Chris Niemi
Thanks a lot, Natalie. I really appreciate it. And Crews, I really appreciate you joining us today. Thanks for logging on from sunny Florida.
Speaking: Crews Gore
Thanks for having me.
Speaking: Chris Niemi
.Brand gTLDs can be perceived as a pretty complex topic. We want to try to simplify it wherever we can to really help you understand what is happening in this space and what’s going on. We’ll discuss what a .Brand can do for you and how they can add value to your organization. We’ll explore how to know if owning a .Brand makes sense for your organization and what other organizations are doing today. We’ll provide updates on the New gTLD Program and let you know where things stand today.
Now is the Time to Prepare to Apply for a .Brand gTLD in the Next Round in 2026
Fairly regularly, our customers and prospects come to me with questions about .Brands, and they say, “Oh, can I get one today?” And sadly, the answer is no. This is a long process, and we’re going to talk about the guidelines and mile posts throughout the presentation, but we want you to know that we’re in the early days in regard to this particular application round.
Right now is the right time to start preparing. Crews and I were talking and saying that this is the sweet spot — you have enough time to make the preparations that are necessary, and it’s not so late that you’re going to feel rushed.
This application process is definitely not a sprint. It’s a marathon. We’re going to talk about the dates in 2025. We’re going to talk about what’s going to happen in 2026. Crews, do you have any thoughts on that?
Speaking: Crews Gore
I think that’s spot on. It really is. You have to champion your .Brand from the application point, getting it through to delegation, and once you’re done there, you’re going to have to keep championing. Your .Brand takes a lot of work and ongoing support, it’s definitely a marathon.
Alright, next slide.
Timeline, History, and Status of .Brand gTLDs
Speaking: Chris Niemi
To level set where we are today, what we would call the last round of applications was in 2012. Out of that round, there were 1930 different applications for around 1400 generic top-level domains, often referred to using the word “string.” Out of those, the first gTLD, which was an IDN, an Internationalized Domain Name, .شبكة, or .shabaka, was launched in late 2013.
Since then, we’ve launched around 1,100 TLDs in the root. At this particular time, what we would consider a .Brand gTLD, number around 440 TLDs and are registered to around 314 different entities. In general, new gTLDs that were launched in 2012 have a combined registration total of a little under 41 million.
What is .Brand gTLD?
A key differentiator and what makes this whole thing a large and important task, and why ICANN has made such an important program around it, is that this isn’t just going to a registrar and paying a small fee for a .com domain and using it the next day; this is actually owning a piece of the internet. When you register a domain, a .com, for example, you’re “renting” it — Verisign, the .com registry, runs the infrastructure. In the case of a .Brand, you’re actually going to run the whole infrastructure yourself.
That’s why there is this broader process and program around determining whether you have the wherewithal administratively, technically, and financially to actually meet all the requirements to run such a part of the internet infrastructure. Crews, have you thought about it differently — the difference between a .com and a .Brand?
Speaking: Crews Gore
It’s just really being able to control your own space. And I know we’re going to get into setting up the infrastructure in more detail later, but know that you’re able to work with partners on that. So, that’s one thing that you can take off your plate. It’s really having your own infrastructure at your organization and being able to create naming conventions that you otherwise might not be able to in a .com namespace or another TLD.
ICANN and .Brand gTLDs
ICANN, which is the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, is responsible for the domain name system and maintaining its safety, security, and resiliency. In the ICANN world, .Brand has a very distinct and particular meaning. There is a registry agreement, an agreement that an entity who signs to be a registry operator, who wants to run their brand or their TLD, has to sign in order to do so. That entity must sign and agree with the terms of Specification 13, a specific part of the agreement. Specification 13, essentially says that the .Brand, the term to the right of the dot, is a trademarked term — it must have an underlying active trademark as well as an active Trademark Clearinghouse submission.
Now, here’s the main difference between a .Brand and an open or restricted TLD: open TLDs like .app, or a restricted TLD like .cpa, can be registered by either the general public or by those who meet certain requirements. For a .Brand — that TLD is only going to be used by the brand holder, which is the registry operator, its affiliates, or its trademark licensees. That’s what makes it special — only a certain party is going to have access to this TLD and they can utilize it in different ways, which is something we’re going to talk about in a moment.
And then, in ICANN terms, it’s also not a generic string, which we’re also going to talk about in more detail.
Why Should You Be Interested in Owning Your Own .Brand gTLD?
So this slide speaks to what you were just talking about, Crews. In your view, what of these benefits is the most important? Security, meaning controlling the infrastructure and building end-user trust. Branding, meaning increasing end-user and audience recognition and awareness. Or domain management, meaning having the availability and flexibility to use domains as needed by your organization. What do you think is a real selling point for having a .Brand?
Speaking: Crews Gore
For me, the biggest selling point is security, being able to set up your infrastructure and naming conventions on your own .Brand, and setting up different security features that a .Brand offers. There’s a lot around security that makes owning a .Brand a winner.
Speaking: Chris Niemi
I agree. The other day we were speaking about how, functionally, you can’t hijack a .Brand. There’s nowhere for it to go when you, the organization, are the registry operator and you control the whole space. That is one of those mind blowing things that really shifted my take on .Brands. You have a point here about domain management, and that feeds into security as well.
Speaking: Crews Gore
We did mention that, and I have use cases of how Fox uses a lot of internal .Fox domain names. I can’t get too much into how we’re using it internally, but you can see by our name servers at Fox that we’re using a naming convention for our DNS. We use .Fox for our name servers. So, coming back to that topic of hijacking or being scared that the domain name might lapse and it might get deleted — when you have your own .Brand, you really are eliminating those risks. If it were to expire, you can renew it immediately rather than worrying about a TLD that deletes upon expiration and losing it. You don’t have to worry about a third party ever taking over that .Brand domain name because it cannot be transferred away from the registrar that you’ve selected to work with.
Speaking: Chris Niemi
I think that’s a really salient point, especially for companies that primarily do a lot of their business online. Having that security is most important.
Recently, we’ve seen other actions in the space as well. People are doing things like adding their whole TLD to the HTTPS preload list. So, if someone enters a domain in their browser and it’s on the preload list, and they make a connection, it’ll essentially force an HTTPS connection. Even if you’re just typing it in with HTTP, having the TLD on the HTTPS preload list will force a safe connection.
We’ve seen other actions, too, like .bank and some other folks are using PSD DMARC. DMARC is an email security feature that usually is at the domain level or the email address level, but in this case, they’re actually adding it at the whole top of the domain level. So, there’s a lot of interesting stuff in the space where you can really maximize those security offerings.
And as you pointed out, Crews, there is flexibility in having nearly unlimited access to any domain in your space. There is only a relatively small number of ICANN-reserved domains, but aside from those, you can essentially register anything. That could lower some of your acquisition costs. Instead of needing to go out and buy an expensive .com or expensive .org or something else, you can use your .Fox in this particular example.
Again, the branding benefit is clearly a frontrunner in terms of importance in the sense that, like in your case, .Fox is in every domain that you’re going to utilize. Essentially, it is an advertisement for your entity and your brand.
Speaking: Crews Gore
I have a relevant example of that branding use case.
We just launched the quiz.fox domain. We launched a podcast called “The Quiz.” So, it’s only about five minutes a day — you take a listen to the podcast, answer some questions, and it becomes a competition on the website.
Our thinking was, “Do we want to go after the quiz.com domain?” I don’t know if it’s in use, and it’s going to cost a lot of money to acquire it. Since we have .Fox and it’s a Fox podcast, it made sense to use the quiz.fox domain. It’s really easy to set up, and you get a short, brandable domain name.
Speaking: Chris Niemi
Yeah, that’s great. That’s a great use case.
The Process of Applying for a .Brand gTLD
As I noted up front, this is kind of a marathon, and we’re looking at probably 2+ years from the time that you apply for the TLD until you actually get to the launch.
In the first round in 2012, the fastest TLDs that made it through the process took around 18 months, and those applicants were really doing everything possible to minimize inefficiencies as they moved through the process. We also saw a lot of .Brands that maybe weren’t in as much of a hurry. Perhaps they were still figuring out some of their strategies, and for some, that took around three years or so. It’s important that we discuss timelines because as you talk to your stakeholders, as you talk to your senior management, it’s important to make sure that folks understand that, if the application window opens in April of 2026 as we expect it to, that doesn’t mean you’re getting your .Brand in May of 2026.
The process will take a fair amount of time to work through, and potentially, you won’t be able to use it until 2027 or 2028 at the earliest. These are some of the steps that you’ll have to work through, and that Markmonitor can help you with: Application, Evaluation, Contracting, Registry System Testing, Delegation, and Launch.
A new, interesting thing that ICANN did in this round was allow registry service providers, or RSPs (what used to be called back-end registry operators), to get pre-approved in their evaluation process. That’ll actually add some efficiencies to the program. But still, even with that done, there will need to be some registry system testing just to make sure everything works on a technical level. And then it’ll move to delegation into the root, and after that, you can actually formally launch the TLD and begin to use the domains in your .Brand.
Crews, do you have any thoughts about the process or the time frames?
Speaking: Crews Gore
This perfectly highlights the process. It’s a step-by-step process — not a sprint, but a marathon that you’ll need to take step-by-step.
Application Challenges: Internal and Organizational
Speaking: Chris Niemi
As anyone with project management experience these days can imagine, there are a number of internal challenges that one can come across as part of the application process, like harnessing new resources and simply getting people together, or doing the necessary work to help stakeholders understand exactly what a .Brand is — what an asset it can be for your organization — and how it actually works.
Crews, a few minutes ago, you mentioned having an internal .Brand champion. At Fox, is that you or someone else? How does that work out for you?
Speaking: Crews Gore
I would say the internal champion is probably me. I love our .Fox and .Brands and domains in general. It also takes forming connections within different departments to create additional champions within the organization who can raise it up through their channels and ultimately get to that C-level executive who can approve it.
Another internal area that can be challenging is legal and trademark. The Registry Agreement is not really a negotiable process, given that ICANN has thousands and thousands of these agreements, and they want them to all be relatively similar. It’s important to have your legal folks look at some of the agreements, look at what the requirements are, and any compliance issues upfront. While it is in the domain space, it is somewhat different than the normal domain management agreements they may be used to.
Another thing to keep in mind is budget. Your fiscal year can play into the larger decisions. So, at Fox, if we were to hypothetically apply in the Next Round, our fiscal year ends at the end of June. So if I need to budget for April of 2026, I need to have this proposed .Brand budget in and ready to be approved by the end of June 2025. That’s why right now is a really good time to take a look at your fiscal year when your budgets are due. You should look and see how it aligns with the application window and make sure you have the budget ready for when the application fee is due.
Speaking: Chris Niemi
That’s great advice. Directly tied to that is the question of who’s going to own the budget. Is it going to be IT? Is it going to be your CISO? Is it going to be legal? Is it going to be someone from your IP group? Figuring that out and conducting an internal negotiation to determine who’s going to own this thing is another huge part of that whole budget piece.
Subsequent to that, once we get into 2026, ICANN may have payment requirements that aren’t particularly corporation-friendly. Lining things up so that you’re ready to pay when you need to and making sure that you’re able to execute those payments in a short time frame is important.
Application Challenges Regarding Process
Another aspect of the application process is determining the entity that will apply to be the registry operator as it will need to provide a lot of information about itself.
Selecting who that entity is can be an important, up-front decision.
There are potential legal, financial, accounting, and IP considerations. Who owns the trademarks underlying the .Brand? Does it need to be licensed for use by the entity that’s going to apply? There might be financial disclosure issues around, say, are you a publicly traded company? Is the information you have publicly shareable? If you’re privately held, what information can you share?
ICANN requires some information on your finances to make sure that you can afford to continue the ongoing maintenance and running of one of these top-level domains. Another challenge is that as part of the process, some of your high-level management may have to provide information about themselves as ICANN engages in some background checks.
So, there are a lot of decisions to be made regarding entities. Crews, the other day you mentioned that some companies might choose to create a holding company or specific entity just for this purpose.
Speaking: Crews Gore
In the last round, for those companies that may not have wanted to have those background checks on their high-level, C-suite executives, we saw cases where they set up holding companies and allocated executives for that holding to be subject to the background checks.
Speaking: Chris Niemi
All of that plays into this preparation time and period. If that’s the route you’re going to go, it may take your finance groups, your tax groups, your treasury groups, time to set up those other entities. That’s why making the decision and doing the work now is critical to having that flexibility to move forward in the way you want in 2025 and later in 2026.
Application Challenges Regarding Policy
There are a number of ICANN policy issues that may affect how you decide what string(s) or brand (s) to apply for.
Closed Generics
Multiple things have happened in the ICANN policy development sphere and in the implementation of those policies that have led to odd outcomes that you’re going to definitely want to consider. There’s this notion of what ICANN calls “closed generics.” Think of those like dictionary words. If your primary brand is a dictionary word, the ICANN board has essentially said that those will not be allowed in this round. So, you’ll want to take that into account.
Replacement String Concept
There’s a new notion, an idea of a “replacement string concept.” So, if you do have a generic string, you might apply for the generic string, but you also can state that if that string either isn’t available or ICANN won’t allow it, then you’ll apply for the generic string plus a qualifier. Say if your primary brand is “sun,” then that could be your primary string. You can make your replacement string something like “sun corp.” It’s a way to quantify your generic string so that you get around that closed generic concept.
Singulars and Plurals
And then there’s the concept of singulars and plurals. So, the ICANN board is adopting a recommendation where delegations will be prohibited for applications of singular or plurals in the same language. If there’s an application for a string that’s singular or plural of an existing gTLD, or if there is an application for a gTLD that is a singular or plural of another applied-for gTLD, the application will be prohibited or could potentially go into a contention set. That may not apply to your brand if you’re a well-known brand that’s unique, but if you have any sort of generic component, that can be something to consider. There are some issues around diacritics, like with non-ASCII characters and internationalized domain names, that ICANN is following up with.
Private Auctions
There’s also the matter of auctions. Private auctions, which refer to auctions handled by parties outside of ICANN and joint ventures, won’t be allowed if you enter into a contention set in this round. If you start working through these issues now, you can try to make sure that you have the best possible applications going forward.
Crews, did any of those jump out at you? Or are there any things that you’re worried about?
Speaking: Crews Gore
No. I do have a question about the closed generics piece because many brands have dictionary words as their brand name. So, will the ICANN Board be reviewing each application one by one to determine which ones would qualify or not qualify? Are they going to just say no to all dictionary words?
Speaking: Chris Niemi
Based on what happened earlier in the year, I’m under the impression that the board has rejected them outright.
But as we know, there can be variability in the actual implementation of what the Board says. It’ll be definitely a thing to watch. Taking into account this new replacement string concept that the SubPro IRT is allowing into the process, if you have the funds, maybe consider applying for multiple strings depending on your concerns and worries regarding closed generics. There are a lot of different strategy components that can come into play making these decisions and those are the things we should be taking into account and considering now while we have the time.
Application Challenges: Various Players in the Space
For those of you not familiar with the space, ICANN has many different companies and entities that provide different portions of the ecosystem. For instance, obviously, ICANN itself is the entity that essentially gives out the rights to handle the top-level domain, and you will enter into a 10-year agreement with them. That’s that registry agreement.
I talked about the registry service provider (RSP) a little earlier. If that’s not your company’s core competency, you’re probably going to outsource to an RSP to manage the technical day-to-day back-end running of the actual TLD, to maintain your infrastructure, and so forth to actually do the required steps, the EPP, or all the various technical requirements that are in the registry agreement for you.
Organizations like Markmonitor are registrars. We can help register domains and a .Brand on your behalf.
Then there are data escrow providers. The registry agreement has some data escrow requirements. Those are a small and simple part of the process, but they’re still nonetheless important.
Crews, are any of those players particularly important to you, or what are your thoughts?
Speaking: Crews Gore
As we discussed earlier, it can be daunting to think about all the technical infrastructure that has to be set up. As an organization or a brand, your piece of the work is really applying for that TLD, and you can work with someone to help you complete that application. You can go to a registry service provider to handle all the technical back end and a data escrow provider. You can leave those things to partners, and you can focus on the application and decide which domain you want to register.
Speaking: Chris Niemi
That’s a great point. Work with your partners and have them help you so that you can just focus on the core and important parts of the application process.
What Should You Do with Your .Brand Once You Own It?
This is where the rubber hits the road. Once you get to the point that the TLD is in the root and has been delegated, you can launch it and utilize it.
Crews, you’ve already given a couple of examples of how Fox has been using their .Brand. Use cases are the word of the day. What are we seeing? How are people utilizing their .Brands in practice in the real world? As you said earlier, a lot of organizations are utilizing them in ways that aren’t obvious or publicly viewable. Can you talk about that some more?
Speaking: Crews Gore
Everyone’s going to have a different strategy. You can use your .Brand internally or both internally and externally. There’s no real cookie-cutter set up for it. So, you’ll see a lot of brands using it only for internal websites. If you have an internal site system set up at your company, and you want to be able to block any domain that tries to come in that is not using your .Brand, it does give you that opportunity to set up specific rules where anything that’s not your .Brand can’t be trusted.
It gives you a lot of different security and infrastructure tools to use email-wise. I was talking to Nisha at Sky Television, and they were talking about how they use the email address contact.sky for third-party mail exchanges. So when they work with a third-party vendor and send out emails, they’re able to add SPF to that domain name and that email address so that they can monitor for any kind of possible hijacking. Different strategies around your .Brand can really help bolster your security.
You can use it for campaigns, social media, and other fun ways to put together a short domain name. There are a lot of different, clever ways to use your .Brand. It really depends on your organization, how you want to use it, and how it best fits.
Speaking: Chris Niemi
You were also talking about how some brands are utilizing a kind of “reverse country code” concept; they’re using a country code before the .Brand. What’s that about?
Speaking: Crews Gore
I did, yeah. I saw that with Abbott and Portugal, so Abbott registered the domain name pt.abbott. So, say you’re having trouble maintaining a local presence in a country, or maybe the registry is not the most reliable, or online, and it’s difficult to update name servers — in that case, you’re able to use a “reverse country code” when you control the namespace. As long as you get approval, you can use that country code dot your brand. Those are some sophisticated ways, clever ways, to work with your .Brand.
Speaking: Chris Niemi
Yeah, definitely.
And then there are other uses and variants of .Brands, like Prudential, the insurance and financial services company. What they did is they actually registered an abbreviation of their main brand — they actually have .Pru. They’re using that on their social media, like on Twitter or X, whatever you want to call it these days. We’re seeing some interesting use cases — models for agents or franchises or affiliates. For instance, Deutsche Beteiligungs AG (DBAG) is a German financial services type company, and they give out .DBAG domains to their their agents. Also, .MMA (not mixed martial arts, like we might think of in the U.S.) is used by a French financial services company who also has a similar model, a lot of their agents are using .MMA domains. If you have that sort of internal affiliate model, that might be an interesting way to employ a .Brand.
And then there’s the king of use cases, which is using a .Brand for a company’s main internet presence. For instance, Canon, the electronics giant, their main international site is global.canon now. There are some other large companies using abbreviations for their .Brand, like the State Bank of India, that uses .SBI for their entire online banking presence.
So, as you said, Crews, there’s a million different ways to deploy your .Brand, and I think it’s interesting.
Speaking: Crews Gore
I want to share the unique example of Microsoft and how they’re using cloud.microsoft to migrate all of their different services. They had domains everywhere, like live.com, microsoft.com, xbox.com, and all these different domain names, different naming conventions. And with cloud.microsoft, they’re able to put that trademark or that brand in front of cloud.microsoft so that they can have sharepoint.cloud.microsoft or live.cloud.microsoft.
Speaking: Chris Niemi
Yeah. Shout out to Cole Quinn at Microsoft. Hhe’s been a long time evangelist for usage of the .Microsoft TLD. It’s taken a number of years, but he’s starting to see fruition of that evangelism. Like you said, they’ve moved a lot of their online services that are for their clients onto that cloud.microsoft domain. That’s a great use case.
Ownership Challenges: Universal Acceptance and Internal Operations/Policy
Let’s talk about challenges you might face once you actually own your .Brand and are using it.
Universal acceptance is this notion that a domain should work anywhere. It should work in a web form. It should work in email. It should work in “linkification.” The latter refers when you see a .Brand on a platform, like examplewebsite.sky or something like that, it should view as and turn into a link that you can click on to visit the web page. It’s still an issue. Over time, we’ve seen some improvement on that. Crews, you had a particular example that you were telling me about earlier and how the Brand Registry Group sent a letter to ICANN about it.
Speaking: Crews Gore
Yeah, so we noticed that on WhatsApp, when you would type in specific .Brand domain names or just new domain name extensions in general, it would only hyperlink some of those .Brands and not others.
So we wrote a letter to the ICANN Board to get that conversation started. We wrote to ask about how these companies, the ones who are creating these hyperlinks, geting their information. What database are they looking at to see what domain extension is actually a domain extension and which are not? Being able to pull from one source and being able to determine what is a .Brand is important in determining “that’s a domain name, let’s hyperlink it.” That was a case where universal acceptance was the issue, but through working with the ICANN community, you’re able to help find solutions for it.
Speaking: Chris Niemi
We heard anecdotal feedback in one of the ICANN sessions that we’re going to talk about in a minute where somebody was saying that universal acceptance was a tougher problem some years back and now it’s actually improved over time. So that’s good to hear.
Another challenge regards companies that are large and trying to maintain their overall domain portfolios. Much of the challenge with .Brands has to do with educating folks internally. Who do they go to register a .Fox, for example, or what are the policies around who can use a .Fox?
Crews, do you have any examples about any of those sorts of issues?
Speaking: Crews Gore
Externally, there are definitely people who reach out and say, “Hey, I’d love to use a .Fox,” and we have to say, “Sorry, it’s just for Fox Corporation to use.”
Internally, whenever someone from a business unit reaches out and wants to register domain name, they’re usually looking for a .com, because traditionally, that’s what they’ve been doing and seeing for the past however many years.
I have to say, “Okay, here’s the status of that .com domain: It’s most likely not available. We’re going to have to go out and try to acquire it for a lot of money, or we have this .Fox domain name. If it aligns with your strategy we can use something short .Fox, save a lot of money, and make it short and sweet.” And we’ve had quite a bit of success with that. We have over 230 domains registered in our .Fox namespace. A lot of them are internal, but a lot are external that we’re using for different websites to interact with our partners and our customers.
Speaking: Chris Niemi
Do you find that people are picking up on that and it’s becoming more popular or is it not?
Speaking: Crews Gore
Yeah, I think it has been like a snowball effect. When you walk onto the Fox studio lot, you’ll see signs where different businesses are using the .Fox domain name. We have a studio store, and they’re using studiostore.fox where you can go there and buy merchandise.
Employees are seeing .Fox and they’re interacting with it. When you’re onboarding as a new hire at Fox, the first website you’re going to go to uses the .Fox domain name. And so you start seeing it and seeing its opportunity to be used.
Speaking: Chris Niemi
It’s ongoing education. Going back to idea that it’s a marathon — it doesn’t stop when the .Brand goes live, it’s ongoing education.
Running a .Brand Requires Regular and Ad Hoc Support Activities
There are many things that continually have to happen in order for your .Brand to work and maintain ICANN compliance.
There are a lot of those compliance requirements in the registry agreement, and your providers, like your RSP, will help you meet them. But you still have to stay in the know — there are frequently policy updates and changes, like we talked about with things like the closed generics. That example is more important during the application phase, but there are policy changes that happen that can affect your TLDs, so make sure you work with partners who are aware of these changes and can keep you up to speed.
Payments can also be a challenge based on various corporate systems — many corporations utilize different payment platforms that ICANN may not necessarily utilize.
And there’s another issue, that I know is close to you, Crews, and that’s working together with like-minded folks in the ICANN community to try to get ahead of some of those policy issues and changes — responding to them, reacting to them, and proactively working on them.
Crews, can you tell everybody what the Brand Registry Group is and what you guys do?
Speaking: Crews Gore
Sure. The Brand Registry Group (BRG) is an organization of different brands that already have their own .Brand or are thinking about applying for it in the future.
It gives those brands a safe space to share ideas and learn from one another. They also get a lot of helpful industry updates, like regarding ICANN, where they may not otherwise have time to attend the meetings or keep up to date. The BRG is actively involved in ICANN through the Registry Stakeholder Group (RSG) within the ICANN community. We provide our members with ICANN updates, talking about what they mean for your .Brand, and giving them that safe space to talk about ideas, questions, success stories, non-success stories. You can learn a lot from different brands and how they’re using their .Brands — you can bring those learnings back to your organization and see what you’re missing or what the right strategy is for you.
Speaking: Chris Niemi
Some brands choose to go a step further and join the Registry Stakeholder Group. I believe the BRG is an associate member of that. Is that right?
Speaking: Crews Gore
We’re an associate member. Yes. Through the BRG, you can comment within the Registry Stakeholder Group or join the Registry Stakeholder Group directly, and we have several members who are members of both groups.
Speaking: Chris Niemi
Great. We always encourage our clients who have the time and the resources to get involved with the ICANN community because, while the policy development process can take some time, it can have large effects on how you run your top-level domains, as well as other things in the space. It’s always good to take part in these sorts of organizations.
ICANN81 Updates
Back to ICANN 81 — Istanbul Türkiye was the site of the ICANN81 Annual General Meeting which is the biggest meeting of the year. Approximately 2,000 people attended in person, and many folks joined in online as well.
At the AGM many things were happening. The Subsequent Procedures Implementation Review Team (SubPro IRT) had a number of meetings where they worked on things concerning the new base registry agreement. Again, that’s the agreement that you would sign as the registry operator. They’re including changes from some of the IDN work that’s been done — the IDN Expedited Policy Development Process (IDN EPDP) phase two final report was a critical thing in the path of the Next Round implementation report. So, it had to happen in order for the Next Round to happen. The GNSO Council approved it so now that’ll go on to the board. The registry agreement will include some new terms that are tied to things around IDNs and variants that were an outcome of some of that IDN EPDP policy work.
We talked a little bit about that replacement string concept that you’ll be able to apply with your primary string, and you can have a secondary replacement string as well if needed, say if you got into a contingent set on the primary string, you could choose to go into the replacement string and proceed with that. There are a number of specifics around that that you’ll want to investigate before going down that route because once you choose the replacement string, you can’t go back. Markmonitor can help with consulting and discussing your specific circumstances, so don’t hesitate to reach out to us. Now, apparently, if brands want to change their string as part of the application process, they’ll be able to file an application change request specifically tied into this replacement string concept.
Let’s also talk about community priority evaluation. If one applies as a community they are representing a larger group or thing. For example, in the first round .CPA applied as a community because it represented all the certified public accountants in the world. Things like that could be a way to break contention, and ICANN discussed some of the legal and risk issues around that.
ICANN is continuing to try and conduct outreach and engagement for the Next Round. They’ve held over a hundred events this year in various geographies, and they’re trying to get the word out that 2026 is the date we’re anticipating for the Next Round. In the month of October 2024 alone they had nearly 30 events. So, they’re trying to do their part.
There’s also the Applicant Support Program which allows parties who perhaps don’t have the resources, financial or otherwise, to run a gTLD to apply to apply and utilize the program for assistance. If approved, they’d get a discount on services as well as potential assistance throughout the application process. That application period opened on November 19th and will be open for a 1 year period.
The RSP Evaluation Program also opened on November 19th. There’ll be a 6-month period for that program now and then there’ll be another 6-month period later. RSPs will go through that process and they’ll be evaluated ahead of time.
The last two ICANN meetings included discussions about New gTLDs and the BRG membership working sessions. Crews, you took part in those. There was some interesting representation of the challenges that we’ve talked about today. How did you feel in that room? What did you think of what went on?
Speaking: Crews Gore
It was good. In that first session, I represented .Brands. We discussed generics and communities and learned about the challenges for each one — how they’re vastly different and how .Brands really stand out. And we’re not focused on metrics about how many domain names you have registered, and there are no costs associated with it when you’re registering, and you’re only working with one partner and not having to onboard a bunch of different registrars — so different challenges, but overall trying to get a feel for the Next Round and give everyone the opportunity to ask their questions about things that they may be worried about in the Next Round or road bumps they see coming up. It was a good opportunity for everyone to ask questions.
Speaking: Chris Niemi
It can be difficult sometimes to gauge levels of interest, but I believe that was one of the more well-attended sessions throughout the week, so that’s always good to hear. And then there was another meeting about the BRG itself and a lot of other .Brand holders attended. Any other thoughts about that or anything new that you learned from that meeting?
Speaking: Crews Gore
In that meeting, the BRG provided the opportunity for brands to ask questions anonymously — it was for those brands that didn’t want to publicly share that they’re thinking about applying in the Next Round for whatever reasons. That was really well attended and we saw a lot of participation within the chat. The questions that were submitted were really good questions. It’s important that brands be given the opportunity to ask those questions even if they may not feel comfortable talking in a public setting or putting their name behind the questions.
Timelines Regarding the .Brand and New gTLD Program
Speaking: Chris Niemi
So, what’s next?
We keep talking about this idea of a marathon. It’s important that you start planning and start your discussions now. Discussing .Brands with your organization can be a big ask — the ICANN application fee alone is $227,000 USD and there could be additional smaller charges on top of that for .Brands. Do you know much about that, Crews?
Speaking: Crews Gore
It sounds a little bit like an a la carte model where ICANN charges $227k as a base fee and then for .Brand applicants and the evaluation there will probably be a smaller $5-10k fee on top of that just for them to review that application as a .Brand under Specification 13. So overall, you have the general ballpark of what the final numbers are going to look like. It is higher than the last round, which was surprising for a lot of people. But when you’re putting it into the context of owning your own namespace, the security benefits around .Brands and what all can be done, it definitely has a compelling use case.
Speaking: Chris Niemi
There will also be other fees, clearly, for utilizing some of those vendors and different parties that we talked about on one of the earlier slides.
Regarding the timelines, the implementation of the policy work continues, and that will progress as we go through this process. The next ICANN meeting is in March in Seattle, Washington, U.S.A. If you are located in North America, that’s a great one to attend. The SubPro IRT will continue to do its work of turning the implementation guidance into operational tasks that will be part of the Applicant Guidebook. That will contain the final rules about how to apply and what the requirements are, and that should be released by the end of December 2025 at the latest. That’s going to be an important part of the process. The ICANN Board and the Community are all working toward an application window that is anticipated to open at the end of April 2026. Any thoughts about any of those timelines, Crews?
Speaking: Crews Gore
No thoughts right now. Once the Applicant Guidebooks are released in 2025, you’ll have three or four months to really take a look at your application, RSP, and hopefully get your application in sooner rather than later.
Next Steps for .Brands as Part of the New gTLD Program
The best way to approach planning for your .Brand is to start now, give yourself plenty of time to do those initial works, and then take a holistic approach and include building succession planning and sustainability into your overarching project. In the 2012 round, we saw various instances where — even as people were getting their .Brand delegated within three years — by that time, the CMO or the CFO or whoever held the final decision may have turned over, and so the .Brand advocates and applicants found themselves back to square one trying to educate people on the importance of their .Brand.
So do that work up front and develop a stakeholder group. Crews, you had some ideas about how to talk to different folks across the organization.
Speaking: Crews Gore
Yeah, so from the Fox perspective, it made sense for me to go to our infrastructure folks and our security folks. We shared services, and we had the same kind of strategy for security and naming conventions. It was easier to talk with them and form, I wouldn’t call it an alliance, but a group within the company that wants to champion our .Brand. In contrast, it would be more challenging with marketing departments that are all split up across all the different businesses that Fox has. I do have a connection in a lot of those groups, but I don’t have them in all. And that’s a bit more difficult. Really, it comes down to finding out who you can talk to in your organization to help champion your .Brand.
Speaking: Chris Niemi
That’s great. Make sure all the voices of those groups are represented and they’re heard.
As part of this preparation, do things like develop your mission statement and start proactively thinking about policies and processes — who’s going to use this and how, what will be internal use only, and things like that. Come up with internal resources and collateral — materials that educate. Maintain a record of what’s worked and what hasn’t. As this process takes a long time, you’ll want to have that record and be able to refer to it as needed. And the gold standard is that of use cases — show how you plan to use it and understand that in the future, say three years from now, there may be new use cases that you hadn’t anticipated and thought of. Do that preparation and work now to get it figured out as much as you can, taking your time to do it right so that you have the best chance of making your .Brand, this integral piece of infrastructure, a real asset to your company.
It’s all going to take time — it’s that idea of a marathon. You’re going to do the training. You’re going to do the base work. And know that if done well and correctly, in a couple of years you’re going to come out of this process with a .Brand, a great asset for your company. Keep the long game in mind, that’s crucial to this whole process.
.Brand Webinar Audience Questions and Answers
Question: How does a .Brand compare to the gold standard of .com? I understand having a .Brand offers flexibility and security, but the public may see .com as the gold standard.
So Crews, how do you answer when the public or even folks in marketing say that having a .com is better? Do you have any thoughts on that?
Speaking: Crews Gore
That’s a tough one because customers have been familiar with .com for such a long time. It really takes partnering with marketing to get out there and let everyone know that your .Brand is available — showcasing it on your website. And when people see it, there’ll be a growing .Brand and brand awareness, right? Companies are doing it successfully. For example, on their homepage Google uses about.google, and we’re seeing other companies — different, really large companies using their .Brand rather than a .com. It can be daunting, and it might not align with your current strategy, but you will be surprised about your customer’s reaction to your .Brand and in a positive way.
Speaking: Chris Niemi
Question: So Crews, would you say that, in general, brands without .Brand TLDs are still primarily using their well-known .com domains for their main websites. Is the concern that the audience may not be familiar with the .Brand TLD and perceive them as less legitimate?
Speaking: Crews Gore
I don’t know if it’s so much that they are perceived as less legitimate. I know it would be a lot of work for these companies that have built so much on their main websites to then undergo a project to move everything. Yet, some of them are doing that. They’ve made it a priority. And it really depends on your organization if that’s what you’re wanting to go for.
I think that as long as you’re redirecting that .com to your new .Brand domain name then you’re going to start building that customer awareness of your .Brand and what your name is. Over time, highlighting and showcasing your .Brand means that your customers are going to know and trust your domain name.
Speaking: Chris Niemi
I want to add something. It’s been a while, but Google came out and said that .Brands are treated the same on the SEO front even if your customers may not currently be as confident in a .Brand. When it comes to actual functional usage, they’re the same on the day-to-day level.
Last question: Does .Brand operate under the UDRP process?
Yes, any new gTLD must subscribe to the udrp.
Crews, in one of the ICANN sessions, we actually had some interesting questions about how it would be possible to transfer a .Brand if it was found to lose the UDRP case. Do you recall what the answer was?
Speaking: Crews Gore
I believe that the answer was that because you can’t transfer it, you’re going to have to find an alternative remedy, which could be something like deleting the domain name at the registry level.
I think that would be a very hypothetical and theoretical discussion because I don’t see that happening. We have heard of brands where they’ve registered a trademarked .Brand before, but because of the Trademark Clearinghouse, that mark holder is going to get an alert that their trademark was registered as a domain. Because of that alert system, the mark holder can reach out and say, “Hey, why’d you register this domain name?” Usually, the registrant deletes those domains right away.
Speaking: Chris Niemi
So, that’s the end of our webinar.
I really appreciate all of you who chose to take part and participate. And thank you, Crews, from the bottom of my heart. I really appreciate that you chose to come on today and share all your wisdom and knowledge with us. It’s been a great session. We appreciate your time and we look forward to speaking to you about .Brands in the future.
Speaking: Crews Gore
Thank you for having me. It’s been a great time. Thanks.
