Huge trade show for online advertising has a disappointing domain name.
This morning I’m off to ad:tech, a large interactive advertising conference, in San Francisco.
Countless times over the past month I’ve gone to ad:tech’s web site to remind myself of the agenda, book a hotel, etc. And most of the time I type in adtech.com.
Unfortunately the show’s web site is ad-tech.com with a hypen. Perhaps even more unfortunate is that there’s an interactive advertising company called ADTECH that owns the adtech.com domain name.
The company, now owned by AOL, gets a ton of highly targeted traffic from people looking for the conference web site. AdTech.com gets a spike in traffic around its big show in New York City in the fall, according to stats from Compete.com.
(If you’re going to the show, please stop by our Media.net booth #1317.)
Fight Back says
lmfao
Anthony David says
Direct type-ins like you mentioned are becoming less and less now. For Google Chrome users (like myself) I dont even go to google anymore to do a google search. I just treat the url bar as if its google and type in “ad tech” and it will automatically forward me to the search results for “ad tech” ad-tech.com is the first result. With Firefox its a similar story, but instead of taking you to the first result, its more like the “i feel lucky” button of google, and automatically forwards you to the first page of what would be the google search results.
Elephants are People Too says
So in other words David you take more steps to get to the domain/site of your choice?
Why would you do more work?
.
Observation says
AD-TECH.COM is the conference, owned by AOL.
ADTECH.COM, is a domain name, that is also owned by AOL
Andrew Allemann says
@ observation – AOL owns DMG Events?
Anthony David says
Its less work, I just type the keywords I want into the Chrome navigation bar now and hit enter 🙂
David J Castello says
@Anthony David
There are two kinds of Direct Navigation. One kind is the first time someone types something in to see what’s there. Yes, this kind of DN is on the decline. The second kind of DN is when someone types in a name that they’ve seen in an adv, promo, etc. THAT type of Direct Navigation is never going away because it is the prime recipient of all that company’s branding.
Troy says
“The Show Without Its Domain Name”
I thought that was TRAFFIC?=)
Shaun Pilfold says
http://www.dmgevents.com/company/tabid/54/Default.aspx
dmg :: events is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Daily Mail and General Trust plc (DMGT, http://www.dmgt.co.uk), one of the largest media companies in the United Kingdom. dmg :: events was founded in 1989 and in 20 years has managed Exhibitions, Conferences and online platforms for many industries in up to 25 countries.
By decentralizing the management and operations of its diverse portfolio of vertical industries, the company maintains the ability to stay close to customer needs in disparate markets that it believes is the key to long-term success.
dmg :: events reported 2008 revenues (as at September 30, 2008) of US$ 404 million and profit of US$ 76million.
Andrew Allemann says
Thanks Shaun, so I’m going to take it that “Observation” is incorrect.
Olney says
I personally don’t think that Ad:Tech will loose out on their target audience because of the hyphen.
Also some regions are on a totally different domain like Tokyo and London.
Ad:tech could be on subdomain wouldn’t matter in this case. You have the smartest ad industry people attending in each region.
Andrew Allemann says
@ Olney – I agree, it’s just an inconvenience for users
Vance Hedderel (dotMobi) says
Andrew: Be sure to bookmark http://sf.ad-tech.mobi while you’re at the show. It should help you navigate the event with a little more ease. (And at least the desktop and mobile domains are parallel with the hyphen use …)
Aaron says
And, AdTech.com appears to be an Exhibitor at Ad-Tech.com.
Per their website, that’s an incredible list of high powered companies as Exhibitors.