The data this week has the potential to be a real bellwether for the domain industry in the coming months. The tussle between Google and the direct advertising networks is really hotting up.

I’m still wondering what’s going to happen to all of the unspent marketing dollars that were slated for Facebook by some of the big corporates. Will it head towards Google and ultimately into the pockets of domain investors? The coming weeks will tell a very interesting tale.

I know that a number of domain investors have lost loved ones to COVID-19. I would like to pass on my sincerest condolences to you and your families. With all of the statistics we mustn’t lose sight of the fact that COVID is indiscriminately impacting the friends and families of some in our great industry. I would encourage everyone to reach out to someone that you know and make sure that they are OK.

Normal 0 false false false EN-GB X-NONE X-NONE It looks like I may have been right....fingers crossed. So what was I right about? The fact that the normalized RPM for the domain industry is beginning to trend upwards at the end June. Given the impact of COVID-19 this isn't completely unexpected but it's always a welcome sign that the Internet is thriving.

As well as the regular suite of charts I went I’d trawl through the archives and pull some data on a monthly basis from July 2019 until today. This really showed a number of the major trends and the fact that domain monetization investors have benefited from an uplift in normalized RPM over the last few months.

I hope you find the information that I’m sharing each week of benefit for your business. Don’t forget to like, comment or subscribe so you don’t miss out on future updates.

What a difference a week makes! In this industry update we can definitely see that Google is getting a lot more aggressive with securing more of the domain traffic while the direct advertising networks are struggling.

The question I find myself asking is, “What’s causing this change?”

At this stage I can only guess that COVID-19 is having a big impact on advertising networks that don’t have a depth of clientele that are wanting to secure the traffic. If a client stops advertising, then there isn’t another to take their place.

Typical mainstays of the direct advertising networks have always been the travel and finance sectors. No one is traveling and loans are scarce as the population hunkers down for a second wave of the virus. This makes the direct advertising networks more vulnerable to global shocks.

That being said, the numbers are still looking very positive and as the video shows, it’s all good for the domain investor.

A lot happens in a single week! The data coming through in this video is riveting as it’s likely tantalizingly shows the beginnings of an upwards trend for the normalized RPM across the board. This is all good news for domain investors.

I’m beginning to think about what the world is going to look like over the next few months. I don’t think we will experience the classical downward trend due to the northern hemisphere summer.

The reason for my thinking is that due to COVID-19, everyone that still has a job has likely burned much of their annual vacation time. This will mean they will be hard at work trying to save their business or keeping the company they work for afloat. This year will be a different one for the domain industry as well.

I would suggest that rather than the typical 15% summer downturn there is going to be a 5% upward trend as the impact of the small to medium sized business that have rushed online will be augmented by the return of the large corporates. It will be interesting to see if my predictions will come true.

In the meantime, check out the video, as it’s full of great stats that will help you plan for your business over the coming months.