Consideration of ways to assess the impact of the new gTLDs in the areas of competition, consumer trust, and consumer choice has been underway in the community for some time. The Board of Directors passed a resolution in 2010 requesting advice from the ALAC, GAC, GNSO and ccNSO on establishing the definition, measures, and three-year targets for those measures, for competition, consumer trust and consumer choice in the context of the domain name system. In response, the Generic Names Supporting Organization (GNSO) and the At-Large Advisory Committee (ALAC) recommended a set of possible metrics to contribute to this review.
The 70 metrics the GNSO and ALAC recommended were forwarded to an Implementation Advisory Group (the IAG-CCT), which evaluated each of those metrics on its feasibility, utility and cost-effectiveness before making a final recommendation to the Board. On 4 March 2014, the IAG-CCT proposed interim Recommendations [PDF, 202 KB] were adopted by the Board, specifically for a Consumer survey and an Economic survey to be conducted immediately. These surveys established a benchmark of the New gTLD marketplace; follow up surveys are to take place one year later.
The Board approved the final recommendations of metrics in February 2015. These recommendations provide the Review Team with several inputs to explore the impact of the New gTLD Program. The data from the metrics, as well as anecdotal and other reports on experiences with the New gTLD Program help provide information on the results of this round of New gTLD delegations. It is anticipated that the data will inform the deliberations of the Review Team; however, whether and to what degree it relies on this data will be entirely within the discretion of the Review Team.
An initial set of metrics and data is published here.
