Company puts Sedo domain and ad monetization business up for sale.
IONOS Group SE announced today that it plans to sell its Sedo domain sales and monetization business.
In a release, Achim Weiß, CEO of IONOS Group SE, stated:
The AdTech business faces exciting challenges and at the same time has a lot of potential. To leverage this potential, increasing management attention is required, which we cannot provide optimally on a permanent basis. In the future, we want to focus entirely on our core business.
Sedo had a good start to the year, but its ad monetization business faces significant upheaval. It was one of the largest players in traffic arbitrage, in which people buy traffic and send it to parked pages, hoping to make a profit. This business has gone through significant changes this year after Google effectively shut down its AdSense for Domains program. That upheaval continues.
Team Internet Group, another large traffic arbitrage company, laid off 200 employees this year after revenue plummeted. Earlier today, it also announced plans to sell parts of its business.
I had heard that Sedo was quietly shopping at least part of its business this year. The domain aftermarket portion of its platform has been sorely neglected, and it would be a unique opportunity for a buyer to accelerate entry into this business.
The security incident on Valentine’s Day last year raised questions about Sedo’s ability to continue as a functioning entity that can successfully implement its own technology, accented by the fact that Sedo inventory doesn’t show up in the registration path on United Domains, a sister entity.
The competitive advantages that Sedo executives recently removed include no longer offering to display traffic stats on sales landers, removing the option for sellers to display the seller’s location and the number of years they’ve been selling on Sedo, and the reliability and accuracy of traffic stats shown to sellers inside the site.
To preserve shareholder value, Sedo should have been sold off several years ago to an entity that is professionally managed. I’d like to see what Jeff here could do with Sedo.
Big news day with the Team Internet news as well. I think monetization was growing so fast that it left the others parts of the business neglected at both companies. Will be interesting to see how it plays out. I’ve worked with a lot of good people at both companies and I hope they land on their feet.
Sad to see Sedo go downhill so fast.
Good luck!