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gTLD Marketplace Health Index Proposal: Call for Comments and Volunteers

COMMENT

Main penholder: Olivier Crepin-Leblond

Assisted by: Alan Greenberg

     TBC

For information about this Public Comment, please click here 

 

FINAL VERSION TO BE SUBMITTED IF RATIFIED

The final version to be submitted, if the draft is ratified, will be placed here by upon completion of the vote. 



FINAL DRAFT VERSION TO BE VOTED UPON BY THE ALAC

The Affirmation of Commitments Section 9.3 mandates a review of the new gTLD program and its impact on promoting competition, consumer trust and consumer choice. Overall, since the creation of a gTLD Marketplace Health Index will serve to help analyze the overall health and diversity of the global gTLD marketplace, the ALAC welcomes this initiative.

The current KPI dashboard ( http://www.icann.org/progress ), now in beta, offers a helpful set of immediately recognizable metrics. The difficulty comes in choosing and explaining the make-up of the indexes that are displayed. Any ambiguity might qualify this exercise as being simple box ticking.  If not implemented carefully, this is indeed the implied risk of the gTLD Marketplace Health Index.

The proposed Key Performance Indicators and Data Sources are mostly based on the work undertaken by successive working groups on Consumer Trust and Confidence. As they are a follow-up to community work, the ALAC supports all of the candidate concepts listed in the three categories:

1 Robust and Competitive gTLD Marketplace

2 Trusted gTLD Marketplace

3 Stable gTLD Marketplace

 

Community Questions

1    Are there any additional concepts not identified in this proposal that are vital to a healthy and diverse global gTLD marketplace?

       a If yes, what are they?

       b How should ICANN measure these additional concepts?

      c  How can ICANN efficiently collect the data required to measure these additional concepts?

From the perspective of FINAL USERS one of the basic Indicators of health of the DNS, should be if the Domain Name not only legally secure, but also alive and ACTIVE.

One of the basic metrics should be to track:

i) how many domain names are just parked and/or for resale,

ii) how many domain names are live in a server, but not actually used (no WWW nor MX records), and

iii) how many domain names have an active webpage and what level of traffic do they generate.

iv) how many domain names just redirect to a domain name in a legacy TLD

This data is readily available from various third party analytical companies among them Nielsen Reports.

Domains that are parked and/or for resale are particularly important as they are the very reason why a domain name is not readily available for a new customer to register at a reasonable price.

 

2    Are there any concepts identified in this proposal that are not indicative of gTLD marketplace health and should not be included in the gTLD Marketplace Health Index?

      a  If so, what are they?

      b  Why is/are these factor(s) not indicative of gTLD marketplace health?

The ALAC believes that the concepts indicated are all indicative of gTLD marketplace health, plus the ones suggested by the ALAC in Question 1.

The ALAC does, however, note that across the proposed concepts, some normalization of data is needed. For example, the "number of Registrars per country" does not reflect reality: for instance a country like Uruguay with a population of 3.5 million people can be very well served with two (2) Registrars, while a country like Brazil with 200 million would be very badly served with two (2) Registrars. The ALAC's suggestion is to have an index related to population, for instance "number of registrars per 100,000 inhabitants, or similar.

Second, the ALAC would appreciate clarification on the term "relative incidence" used in the trusted gTLD marketplace section of the report (2b, 2c, 2d); three KPIs begin with "relative incidence". What does "relative" mean in this context - relative to what?


3  Should ICANN track the impact of resellers on gTLD marketplace health?

       a If so, what factors related to resellers should ICANN track?

The ALAC believes that Resellers are key component parts of the domain name sales channel. They should be subjected to the same tracking as Registrars, for the purpose of this Marketplace Health Index Proposal. The ALAC notes that customers purchasing domain names mostly do not know the difference between a Registrar and a Reseller, hence the categorical need for Reseller performance tracking that is identical to Registrar performance tracking.

 

4    Are there additional data sources that ICANN should consult in addition to or instead of the sources identified above?

One data source is shown as ICANNCompetition, Consumer Trust, and Consumer Choice (CCT) metrics project . The ALAC believes that other concepts should also consider recommendations from this group regarding sources of data. Nielsen reports are one such source but there are plenty of others that provide data that is readily usable.


5    How frequently should ICANN update this data?

This data should be updated yearly or at least at intervals no longer than those proposed in the Affirmation of Commitments Section 9.3

 

Conclusions and Recommendations

The ALAC is pleased to see the proposals for a Marketplace Health Index and has suggested further concepts that are vital to a healthy and diverse global gTLD marketplace.

However, the ALAC notes that this Health Index is restricted to the market purchasing, sale and resale of domain names under the new gTLD extensions. The ALAC reminds ICANN that users of the DNS are not solely restricted to "Consumers" as "domain name buyers and sellers". Users of the DNS total the 3.6Bn people using the Internet. They vastly outnumber domain name registrants.

As a result, the ALAC Advises ICANN that the gTLD Marketplace Health Index falls short of satisfying the need for a wider DNS Health Index that would produce a set of KPIs about Internet End Users, the stability of the Naming System itself and its perception by Internet End Users. ICANN should not consider that the creation of a Marketplace Health Index completely satisfies the requirements laid out in the relevant sections of the Affirmation of Commitments. The gTLD Marketplace Health Index is a step in the right direction but does not go far enough.

 


FIRST DRAFT SUBMITTED


The Affirmation of Commitments Section 9.3 mandates a review of the new gTLD program and its impact on promoting competition, consumer trust and consumer choice. Overall, since the creation of a gTLD Marketplace Health Index will serve to help analyze the overall health and diversity of the global gTLD marketplace, the ALAC welcomes this initiative.

The current KPI dashboard ( http://www.icann.org/progress ), now in beta, offers a helpful set of immediately recognizable metrics. The difficulty comes in choosing and explaining the make-up of the indexes that are displayed. Any ambiguity might qualify this exercise as being simple box ticking.  If not implemented carefully, this is indeed the implied risk of the gTLD Marketplace Health Index.

The proposed Key Performance Indicators and Data Sources are mostly based on the work undertaken by successive working groups on Consumer Trust and Confidence. As they are a follow-up to community work, the ALAC supports all of the candidate concepts listed in the three categories:

1 Robust and Competitive gTLD Marketplace

2 Trusted gTLD Marketplace

3 Stable gTLD Marketplace

 

Community Questions

1    Are there any additional concepts not identified in this proposal that are vital to a healthy and diverse global gTLD marketplace?

       a If yes, what are they?

       b How should ICANN measure these additional concepts?

      c  How can ICANN efficiently collect the data required to measure these additional concepts?

[ OCL: Can anyone suggest additional concepts? ]

 

2    Are there any concepts identified in this proposal that are not indicative of gTLD marketplace health and should not be included in the gTLD Marketplace Health Index?

      a  If so, what are they?

      b  Why is/are these factor(s) not indicative of gTLD marketplace health?

[ OCL: I believe that the concepts indicated are all indicative of gTLD marketplace health. Can you point any that you feel are NOT indicative of gTLD marketplace health? ]


  3  Should ICANN track the impact of resellers on gTLD marketplace health?

       a If so, what factors related to resellers should ICANN track?

The ALAC believes that resellers are key component parts of the domain name sales channel. They should be subjected to the same tracking as Registrars, for the purpose of this Marketplace Health Index Proposal. The ALAC notes that customers purchasing domain names mostly do not know the different between a Registrar and a reseller, hence the categorical need for reseller performance tracking.

 

4    Are there additional data sources that ICANN should consult in addition to or instead of the sources identified above?

One data source is shown as ICANNCompetition, Consumer Trust, and Consumer Choice (CCT) metrics project . The ALAC believes that other concepts should also consider recommendations from this group regarding sources of data.

5    How frequently should ICANN update this data?

This data should be updated yearly or at least at intervals no longer than those proposed in the Affirmation of Commitments Section 9.3

 

Conclusions and Recommendations

The ALAC is pleased to see the proposals for a Marketplace Health Index.

However, the ALAC notes that this Health Index is restricted to the market purchasing, sale and resale of domain names under the new gTLD extensions. The ALAC reminds ICANN that users of the DNS are not solely restricted to Consumers as domain name buyers and sellers. Users of the DNS total the 3.6Bn people using the Internet. They vastly outnumber domain name registrants.

As a result, the ALAC Advises ICANN that the gTLD Marketplace Health Index falls short of satisfying the need for a wider DNS Health Index that would produce a set of KPIs about Internet End Users, the stability of the Naming System itself and its perception by Internet End Users. ICANN should not consider that the creation of a Marketplace Health Index completely satisfies the requirements laid out in the relevant sections of the Affirmation of Commitments. The gTLD Marketplace Health Index is a step in the right direction but does not go far enough.

are vital to a healthy and diverse global gTLD marketplace

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