| I believe that it's because the old grey haired board of directors in these companies consider domain names a worthless, minor detail, especially .ca. Their brand names and advertising are so big that anyone can find them easily on the internet.
In five years they might be advised by some advertising agency to buy the appropriate domain names. In the meantime the advertising agencies are pushing social networking sites, and rightly so.
I find that the domain names have the biggest value for the money, for a business. Once you own the name candy.com, you get free, TARGETED, traffic for life. Even if type-in is only 5% of your traffic, how much is that premium traffic worth?
Of course it helps significantly to advertise the name, get it ranked, etc., which are all easier with a generic name, but you also and most importantly have the most memorable internet candy site. It's not JoesCandyStore.com or was it JoesCandyShop.com? People will easily remember how to get there, how much is that worth?
I believe that relative to a company's advertising budget, the price they are willing to pay for a premium generic domain name, is grossly undervalued. Most companies haven't even considered buying the generics. Maybe in another 20 years when today's "30 somethings" are then running these companies.
Or maybe we are all speculating wrongly here, some days it sure feels like it... |