VeriSign recently released their Domain Name Industry Brief and the annual numbers continue to show a growing appetite for new domain name registrations (internet real estate).

The Domain Name Industry closed 2007 with more than 153 million domain name registrations worldwide across all of the Top Level Domain Names (TLDs), an increase of nearly 33 million domain name registrations since the close of 2006.

153 million is an astronomical figure no matter how you look at it. The .com TLD is still without doubt the ‘de facto’ extension on the web with approx 70 million registered names. Good luck finding a new .com name that isn’t totally obscure, mangled or long-winded. The aftermarket for .com’s should continue to experience torrid growth and higher valuations with scarcity becoming an ongoing and growing problem.Localization is also on the rise as country-code TLDs are becoming more and more popular. Part of this localization trend is connected to the scarcity of .com’s ie, 1 million .ca’s vs. 70 million .com’s – this means you are almost certainly going to find better .ca options for a new registration. In addition, both companies and individuals are wanting to brand themselves with a name that resonates within their own country. Germany (.de), China (.cn) and the UK (.co.uk) are currently the 3 largest ccTLDs on the web.

2007 ended with a total base of just over 58 million ccTLD domain name registrations. The ccTLDs as a whole experienced 33 percent growth year over year.

It should be noted that total registered .ca domain names are expected to double over the next 3-4 years (900K today to 1.8M by 2011-12).    

How is this for a headline?“If The Number ‘5’ License Plate is Worth $6.8 Million, What Is Your Domain Name Worth?”Is it crazy to compare the recent auction frenzy for vanity license plates to the burgeoning domain name aftermarket? According to Traverse Legal, the answer is ‘yes’. I don’t totally ‘get’ the value in vanity plates especially when they are suggesting that a numbered ‘1’ vanity plate would potentially fetch more than ‘sex.com’ sold for. When you compare the potential impressions and reach on a ‘sex.com’ domain name with that of a localized license plate, one has to wonder how these two entities could possibly share a common value? An eye-catching story nonetheless.

Domain names and license plates share some common characteristics. Both allow only one person to own a particular word or number. The supply of good words, vanity words and generic words is finite. Demand for those strong generic or descriptive words is high. Where does supply meet demand on the price curve? Domainers can learn from what is happening in a similar market for – of all things – vanity license plates.The number “5” license plate sold for $6.8 million dollars in Saudi Arabia and another 300 vanity plates sold for another $56 million at last week’s auction. It is estimated that the number “1” will be auctioned next month for up to $20 million dollars.