"Last week I was watching TV and saw something that really caught my eye. It was a commercial for Special K, the breakfast cereal from Kellogg, and rather than end with a plug for the product's web site -- SpecialK.com -- it advised people to search Yahoo! for "Special K" instead."
"Of the 10 fastest rising search terms on Google last year, 7 were for searches where adding a ".com" would have brought the user to the correct site. These are called "navigational" searches -- searches done when the user already knows exactly where he or she wants to end up -- and they make up a surprising large number of total seaches."
"...with the continued rise of the mobile web it would seem that long, unwieldy URLs will become even more cumbersome on devices with limited screen size. That makes search even more important, and driving consumers to your product via search seems like a safe bet."
By doing that, Special K is giving a lot of other sites some free traffic or eyeballs. When you search it at yahoo, there are a list of ads on the right, and other sites to do with Special K, including Wikipedia, a blog, radio station, etc. Their site is at the top, but far from the only choice. Seems silly they wouldn't use SpecialK.com in the ad.
This can't work for everyone though, so many words are used by so many companies and sites, you would just be helping drive more traffic there too.
Keywords ... been there, done that. They never caught on, and for good reasons...
Fundlemental problem with all the various keyword systems I've ever seen is the lack of control the website owner has over it ...
For example take the "Special K" Yahoo keyword...
* It's NOT universal, such as for folks who type that in the address bar, search on it at Google, etc
* It's transient ... Yahoo could choose to reassign / disable / reroute it at some point for whatever reasons.
* Variable pricing / gouging - Yahoo can set the price of the keyword to anything they choose.
* Too difficult to explain - the makers of Special K when promoting the keyword has to not only mention the keyword, but where its usable - they have to say "Yahoo keyword Special K" as opposed to simply saying "SpecialK.com" - when internet users see / hear a domain, they immediately know what it is, and that it will work regardless of browser, search engine, etc - the same can't be said for keywords, which aren't standardized.
Bottom line is domain names remain useful and important for businesses - I increasingly meet more laypeople who not only know what domains are, but are even aware of the domain name resale market.
Don't forget, you can't really have a site rank without a domain.
When was the last time you looked up ANY keywords (that wasn't in some way extremely shady) and came up with an IP address?
Seriously, the only time I ever see IP addresses coming up in a search, instead of a domain, is when I'm looking for exploit tools
domains. 
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