Do Advertising Firms Understand Domains?
The question of whether the advertising industry understands domain names did not elicit uniform responses at the conference. Speaking at the back of the auction hall on Aug. 15 after Rebate.com and Rebates.com had been sold together for US$1 million, Sahar Sarid outlined the “yes” position. Sarid is an Israeli-born domain investor and cofounder of the Recall Media Group. Will old-media advertising firms become involved in the secondary market for domain names in the near future? No, Sarid answered. “It’s a conflict of interest,” Sarid said. Why? “Because it works,” he replied, explaining that the Internet is not good for old-media advertising agencies because it can make them look bad and cause their clients to fire them. Sarid sees little or no accountability in ad spending on traditional media. As he described it, clients are encouraged to spend large amounts of money on television and print ads, without being able to accurately gauge the results — either in terms of calculating th