Anyone who reads this knows that I don’t believe in buying .mobi domains, primarily because the browser in iPhone is a full web browser that displays real websites rather than tiny .mobi sites. The other phone providers are scrambling to offer similar browsers along with hi-res larger displays to keep up. This transition means .mobi will not have much shelf life.
Now Andrew at Domain Name Wire accurately points out a major flaw in .mobi monetization: Most ads won’t convert. He uses mortgage ads as an example. If you click the ad on your phone and it takes you to a landing page with a form or calculator, it is highly unlikely that you will be able to use these services on a phone, meaning no possibility of a conversion. D’oh!
For .mobi to be viable, the ad serving experience must be completely revamped to work in a .mobi browser and the markets are limited to subjects that are related to mobility such as mapping, yellow page lookups, restaurants, etc. This leaves out a lot of advertisers and makes relevance very difficult to achieve.
He closes with two oddities. Overhearing some experienced domainers laughing at the price mortgage.mobi brought at an auction ($25,000) and closing this damning story with the observation that:
“And this isn’t a knock on .mobi domains — this is the one new domain extension that makes sense”
Andrew, this is a very big knock on .mobi, IMHO.
October 26th, 2007 at 9:46 am
Thanks for your write up. With regards to saying it’s not a dis on .mobi, there are two ways to look at .mobi:
1. Investment. You’re right that my thoughts on mobile PPC advertising is a knock here.
2. Usefulness. People use the mobile web. .Mobi is a good way to differentiate between web site made for small screens and bid ones. Furthermore, it has a purpose…which can’t be said for domains like .info and .biz. I think the prices paid for .mobi domains are out of whack right now. But I think compared to some other “new extensions”, this one at least has a purpose.
One other thought. If someone cracks the mobile advertising code (it’s not PPC), then there’s a lot of value here