Majority of estimated “losses” are from keyword search engine bidding.

MarkMonitor just released a “Brandjacking” report (pdf) about online hotel bookings, estimating that large hotel brands lose over $2 billion a year in lost bookings and unnecessary commissions. The bulk of these losses are from competitors and travel agencies bidding on hotel brand names in search ads.

Also included in the report is a study of cybersquatting of 5 top hotel brands. MarkMonitor says it found 2,100 cybersquatted domain names of the five brands which collectively deliver over 57 million visits a year.

Much of this cybersquatting is from lesser-known competitors to these brands, not traditional PPC cybersquatters.

MarkMonitor is a brand protection firm, so you should read the report with a grain of salt. How the company calculated the lost bookings and commissions isn’t detailed in the report, and you can rest assured that they were anything but conservative.

Consider one notorious example from brand advocacy group CADNA, which claimed that clicks from typos of sites such as Google and YouTube averaged $2.74 per click. CADNA said its source for the figure was a VeriSign report, but the number is nowhere in the cited report. (It later adjusted the figure downward to $2.03 while not explaining its faulty reference from before. This number is still way too high, perhaps by a figure of 50 or more.)

One more thing about the MarkMonitor report: is it just me, or does it equate domainers with cybersquatters on the illustration on page 4?

Organization says it still might be able to move ahead with program next month.

ICANN’s Board thinks it might still be able to approve the new top level domain name program at the beginning of next month’s meeting in Singapore.

The approval was put into doubt after comments from government officials.

But ICANN and the Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) just released a joint statement about another “productive meeting” between the two of them. The statement concludes:

The latest discussion and ICANN Board and GAC agreement on the benefits of having a face-to-face meeting in Singapore pave the way to possible Board consideration of program approval on 20 June 2011.

If the program is approved on June 20, I can guarantee you that ICANN will make significant concessions to the GAC between now and then. Those concessions will mostly be in favor of trademark interests.

Domain broker reports record two digit domain name.

DomainAdvisors, a division of PPX International, just announced a record sales price for a two digit domain name.

The group brokered the sale of 33.com for $358,000. I searched a couple databases and cannot find any two digit domains that have sold for more, although there are some two letter domains that have eclipsed this amount.

Tessa Holcomb, Group General Manager for PPX International, says that the company has closed $4 million in sales so far this year after closing the 33.com deal last week.

The company has also expanded its DM Pro monetization and domain management service to mid-sized domain owners (from press release):

“Having proven our domain management system with some of the largest portfolio holders in the world, we are now meeting the requests of many mid-sized owners wanting to take advantage of our established platform,” said Gregg McNair, Group Chairman for PPX. “DM Pro clients will be serviced by their own personal advisor from our DA team. Jeffrey Gabriel, President of DA (having assumed new duties solely in the areas of domain parking, CPA and other special projects) will be spearheading the DM Pro initiative.

Domain registrar tops last year’s donations, and it’s only May.

Through just five months of 2011, domain name registrar Go Daddy has already donated more to charity than it did all of last year.

Go Daddy’s philanthropic organization Go Daddy Cares has donated $4.2 million to charity so far this year, compared to $3.4 million all of last year, the company announced today.

One of the biggest beneficiaries is Hope for Haiti, recipient of $1 million in donations from the company. Go Daddy is currently letting customers “round up for charity” by rounding up the cost of their purchases to the nearest dollar and donating the difference (matched by Go Daddy) to Hope for Haiti.

But the money has been spread across more than 50 charities according to this ongoing ticker at GoDaddyCares.com. (The ticker’s total is as of April 5, so it’s a bit behind).

By my calculation, Go Daddy’s donations year-to-date come out to about 9 cents per domain currently registered at Go Daddy, and about $1,300 per employee.

LinkedIn stock pops on open and related domain is surely getting a lot of traffic.

The number one trending search on Google right now? “LinkedIn IPO”.

And it’s no wonder, with the LNKD stock price doubling on its first day. The sign of a new tech bubble? Pent up demand for tech IPOs? I don’t know, but I’m not buying it.

Curious about this hot search term, I noticed that LinkedInIPO.com is registered. It’s currently a parked page that seems to be forwarding to an affiliate site. (Don’t go there. It’s one of those sites that gets you trapped and takes several clicks to close out of.) The domain name was registered back in 2009. It’s also listed for sale on Sedo for 500 EUR.

Now I know that investors are more sophisticated that average web users, but how much do you want to bet LinkedInIPO.com is getting a ton of traffic today?