Movie studios aren’t willing to pay for great domain names.
In an interview with NPR a few weeks ago I noted that movie studios rarely part with their cash for the “ideal” domain name for a movie release.
I think one big reason for this is that most people gravitate to review sites and movie listing sites rather than the official site for a movie. They want to hear what other people are saying about the movie and when it is playing rather than the studio’s pitch about how great the movie is.
Thus, the official web site domain name isn’t all that important. At the end of the day it would be difficult to convince a studio that having an inferior domain name will lead to lower ticket sales.
Below are the top 11 movies at the box office last weekend and what I think are their “official” web site addresses. A lot of times a studio will advertise an alternative address that forwards to these, though.
X-Men First Class – x-menfirstclassmovie.com
Hangover 2 – hangoverpart2.warnerbros.com (the studio has registered domains for a possible sequel)
Kung Fu Panda 2 – KungFuPanda.com
Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides – disney.go.com/pirates
Bridesmaids – BridesmaidsMovie.com
Thor – thor.marvel.com
Fast Five – FastFiveMovie.com
Midnight in Paris – MidnightinParisFilm.com forwards to http://www.sonyclassics.com/midnightinparis/
Something Borrowed – somethingborrowedmovie.warnerbros.com
Jumping the Broom – jumpingthebroom-movie.com
Rio www.rio-themovie.com (probably sent a lot of traffic to Rio.com)
Larry says
“At the end of the day it would be difficult to convince a studio that having an inferior domain name will lead to lower ticket sales.”
True. But owning the domain name will help with spin-off products and projects if the movie is successful.
Also checking compete.com will show the loss of traffic when comparing the name w/o “movie” to with “movie” (fastfive.com vs. fastfivemovie.com) after the movie was announced and/or released.
Acro says
I agree overall, however I’ve had two such sales that paid handsomely. One was a generic that matched the movie’s title, the other was an intentional movie title match (we all make mistakes in our early years, oh well!) 😀
Alex says
What do you mean by mistakes? What was the mistake exactly
jorge says
TV shows follow a similar pattern. They often don’t own the domain.
Ron says
If you have a movie with a $100M budget, is paying $5-$10k on a domain out of the question, really doesn’t seem like it, they spend more on sandwiches a day…
jp says
I think the reasons are far more simple:
1) New movie is only a big deal for a matter of weeks.
2) People learn of the movie’s existence by advertisements not by direct nav or searching for it. They have nothing to search for until they first know it exists.
3) After the movie is old/gone to DVD Netflix sells it, not the movie website.
The only possible purpose for a movie website would be to hype up the movie further beyond the 30 second commercial the possible customer already saw that alerted them of the movie and the website in the first place. If the movie is that hard a sell then the website won’t save them anyway, at least not enough to justify a 5 figure purchase. 4 figures ok I think, and yes I know movies make millions of dollars but why take a huge chunk out for a domain that will provide little utility? If the website itself were somehow linked to being important to the movie experience and adds value than more expensive makes sense, but that depends on the movie. If all movies started showing extra scenes etc… on the websites however they would just be setting themselves up to have to always drop a bunch of cash on domain names, and would providing these extra scenes increase revenue after the movie has gone to DVD? Only if they sell a bunch of commercials to be stuck in the extra scenes. Probably not worth it.
Diginames says
As another commenter said, $5-10K is a drop in the bucket that is their marketing budget. I think that they don’t see the potential of domain names in their marketing plan, but this is a mistake and should change.
They could have a domain name that people can actually remember and tie it in with their commercials and previews. They could offer behind the scenes or extra footage. Offer other interactive content and try to generate more online buzz. I am amazed that their marketing people don’t sell them on this a little more often.
aaron wall says
I have seen at least 1 movie studio lease a domain, where they pay you to help market your domain for you 🙂
jorge says
I wrote an article, a few years ago, to help producers in the movie/tv industry to capitalize on their online presence. Not only do they NOT get get a good domain, they are late to the table for other assets like Twitter accounts, and more: http://www.avantla.com/whitepaper-entertainment
JNet says
@ Diginames — I agree.
Also I have the name “ItsComplicated.com” …I had it way before the filming and “announcement” of the production by the same name…which starred Meryl Streep, Steve Martin and Alex Baldwin…
….Right after the movie was first announced and when it was on the silver screen, the amount of purchase inquiries jumped substantially (as well as traffic certainly)… but I was in no rush to sell the name on the cheap…got a few respectable offers but not good enough..so I still have it…..
… Not sure if any of the “anonymous” inquiries or some others, were part of that production directly or a consultant going “incognito”
Mark J says
In the case of a Disney movie, I would think the domain name would be important for product sales and so on.
What I’m saying is that I have a great domain name that is the exact name of an upcoming (within 2 years) Disney animated film. So, obviously, I’m hoping they’re interested and willing to talk.
Any comments or suggestions? I’m really new at this and got very fortunate to land this domain inexpensively.
NoobWorld says
I own several generic movie domain names that deliver the traffic to my main box office site. People will suggest movie studios will make excuses as why they don’t need the top domain name for their movies.
Maybe domainers can lease the best movie domains ideal to the new movie release. As a result, they don’t have to worry about owning the domain name.
It is good marketing move for them to own the movie name and movie.com, especially when the keywords produce high searches.
It is easy to prove that a few generic movie names generate excellent type-in traffic and are indexed quite well. The movie studios want to own the domains, but they don’t want to spend the money to acquire them since the movie is only in the movie box office for a short time.
It is good to market the movie domain several months prior to a movie release. Movie fans will type-in the movie name and movie.com. Imagine owning the top movie domain name and the studio owning a bad hyphenated domain version.
Three of my movie domains are up and coming movies with high market potential. One movie trailer domain is searched exactly 30,000 times a month. The sequel is due out in the near future. Owning excellent “the” names with high potential to become movies are good to own.
NoobWorld says
Owning movie genre domains are excellent. Several of my movie genre domains delivered high traffic. However, I have to contribute between 20-110 articles per website.
These are evergreen movie genre websites that will always remain popular. You can point a good movie domain to the genre sites associated with the movie.
You can never go wrong with film genre domain names. We see how popular horrormovies.com is in that space. You can write about practically any horror movie. There are also dozens of great movie categories people overlooked last year.
These websites are not generating good traffic based on content, the domain name and genre category. One site delivered 6,000 unique in the first week of a movie release that falls under the category.
All you have to do is write good movie reviews the first weekend, feature a movie trailer, and discuss the top movies in the genre. Essentially, you are investing the time to speed up the user search. You’ll get indexed.
NoobWorld says
Meant to say, “These websites are generating good traffic based on content, the domain name and genre category. One site delivered 6,000 unique in the first week of a movie release that falls under the category.”
ashvin says
As per my perception, the rapid change in .dot com advertising and awareness, the studios may consider the importance of a domain name, more serious than before. Recently I sold a domain name an exact match of the upcoming movie name. I don’t know abt the buyer but the price he paid is not that much (low 4 figure)
Let’s see, how hollywood consider the movie title domain names in future.
chicagocrust99 says
Very interesting topic here…
My experience here…
I have few domains in this patter…
Movietitlemovie.com
They skipped to acquire from me and registered movietitlefilm.com
In another scenario…I had movietitle.com and movietitlemovie.com ,
the registered movititle.movie (.movie is an expansive tld,I think hollywood major studios are the promoter because there were only 2000 registered domains in .movie tld but a domain costs you $250)
So, as far my experience is, they don’t care for our movietitle.com or movietitlemovie.com, they have many options available.
Thanks,
chicagocrust99 says
One more example in India
https://dm.guru/blog/suidhaaga-co-in-movie-website-launched/