Should Your Company Apply for a Brand TLD?

## The Brand TLD Question The question is deceptively simple: should your company apply for its own top-level domain — .yourbrand — in the ICANN 2026 round? The answer depends on a nuanced analysis of costs, strategic use cases, organisational readiness, and alternatives. This guide provides a structured ROI framework, examines real-world case studies from the 2012 round, and gives you a decision framework for making this significant investment. Use the Domain Cost Calculator to model the financial investment required for your specific situation. ## What Is a Brand TLD? A Brand TLD (.brand) is a gTLD (Generic Top-Level Domain) extension that corresponds to a company's trademark — for example, .google, .amazon, .bmw, .barclays. Unlike generic TLDs (.shop, .app) or geographic TLDs (.london, .nyc), brand TLDs are: - **Operated by the brand itself** (or a contracted Registry Operator on its behalf) - **Closed or restricted**: Typically only the brand's own properties use the TLD (Top-Level Domain); registrations are not sold to third parties - **Defensive and expressive**: Primarily used to control the brand's namespace and prevent cybersquatting In the 2012 round, approximately 580 of the 1,930 applications were for brand TLDs. Major companies including Google, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Barclays, Johnson & Johnson, Toyota, BMW, and hundreds more participated. ## The Case For: Why Companies Apply ### 1. Brand Namespace Control A brand TLD gives the company absolute control over its second-level namespace. No one can register yourbrand.com and use it for phishing, criticism, or competitive confusion — because .yourbrand does not sell registrations to third parties. Real-world impact: Phishing attacks, credential theft, and brand impersonation via domain names cost companies billions annually. A brand TLD eliminates the second-level domain as an attack surface entirely. ### 2. Consumer Trust Signals When consumers see a URL ending in .yourbrand rather than yourbrand.com or yourbrand-[something].com, the namespace itself signals authenticity. This is especially valuable in: - Banking and financial services (preventing phishing) - Healthcare (preventing medical misinformation on fake sites) - E-commerce (preventing fake storefronts) Barclays Bank, for example, uses .barclays for consumer-facing banking pages specifically to signal authenticity to customers who have been warned to look for the .barclays extension. ### 3. Internal Namespace Organisation Large corporations with complex subsidiary, product, and geographic structures benefit from brand TLD organisation. Rather than managing dozens of third-level domains or complex subdomain hierarchies under .com, a brand TLD provides: - Clean product namespaces: shop.yourbrand, support.yourbrand, careers.yourbrand - Subsidiary differentiation: germany.yourbrand, asia.yourbrand - Product line separation: enterprise.yourbrand, consumer.yourbrand ### 4. Future-Proofing The internet's namespace is expanding. A company that controls .yourbrand owns that namespace permanently, with no risk of it being registered by a third party. As the internet evolves — particularly with new applications, extended reality, and distributed systems — controlling a TLD provides maximum flexibility. ### 5. ICANN Application as IP Protection Even if you never use your brand TLD actively, applying for it prevents anyone else from obtaining it. In the 2012 round, a concern among many Fortune 500 companies was: "What if someone else applies for .ourbrand?" The answer was to apply defensively, even without a clear deployment plan. ## The Case Against: Why Most Companies Shouldn't Apply ### 1. The Costs Are Substantial A brand TLD application costs a minimum of $500,000–$1,000,000 in Year 1 (application fee, legal, technical setup) and ongoing operational costs of $300,000–$600,000 per year thereafter. See Cost of Applying for a New TLD: Full Breakdown for the full breakdown. For most companies, this investment cannot be justified by ROI from the strategic use cases above — especially when the same protective goals can be achieved at far lower cost (see "Alternatives" below). ### 2. The Operational Burden Is Real Operating a TLD (Top-Level Domain) is not a one-time project. It is an ongoing regulated activity with: - Annual ICANN fees ($25,000+ per year) - Back-end Registry Operator contracts - Compliance obligations (abuse reporting, data escrow, RDAP) - ICANN audit exposure - Registry Agreement renewal cycles Companies that applied in 2012 without fully accounting for this operational burden often found themselves with an expensive liability rather than a strategic asset. ### 3. Browser and OS Adoption Is Not Guaranteed For a brand TLD to provide the consumer trust signal its proponents envision, browsers and operating systems must display it prominently and securely. While all brand TLDs delegated through ICANN are technically valid DNS names resolvable by any standards-compliant resolver, the user experience depends on browsers: - Chrome, Firefox, Safari: All resolve brand TLDs correctly - The "green padlock" HTTPS trust signal still requires a valid SSL certificate, which Certificate Authorities issue for brand TLDs on standard terms In practice, consumer recognition of brand TLDs remains low. Users are conditioned to expect .com. A URL ending in .google or .barclays is recognisable to sophisticated users, but the average consumer may not understand why a URL doesn't end in .com. ### 4. SEO Uncertainty Google has publicly stated that new TLDs — including brand TLDs — are treated the same as .com for ranking purposes. However, historical data from the 2012 round shows mixed results for new TLD SEO performance. Pages on brand TLDs have performed well when the sites are properly optimised, but the namespace alone provides no SEO advantage, and the migration cost from .com to a brand TLD is significant. ## Case Studies ### Google: Full Commitment (.google, .app, .dev, .page, .new, .chrome, .docs) Google applied for and received multiple TLDs in the 2012 round, spending an estimated $100+ million in total (including auctions). Google's approach: - **.app, .dev**: Opened these to public registration, creating successful generic TLD businesses. .app is an HTTPS-only TLD now used by millions of developers. - **.google**: Used internally for employee tools and Google products. - **.page**: Opened to public registration as a simple web publishing extension. Google's brand TLD strategy was exceptional because they had the scale to turn generic-adjacent TLDs into viable businesses. Few companies have this capacity. ### Amazon: A Cautionary Tale (.amazon) Amazon applied for .amazon as a brand TLD, expecting straightforward approval. The application was opposed by Brazil and Peru, triggering a decade-long ICANN dispute that was not resolved until 2022. Amazon eventually received delegation of .amazon in 2023 — approximately 11 years after applying and likely $50M+ in legal costs, advocacy, and fees. Most companies cannot sustain a fight of this duration. ### BMW (.bmw, .mini, .rolls-royce) BMW's brand TLD strategy was architecturally sound: internal use for employee and dealership portals, with the TLD serving as a trust signal for authenticated communications. However, BMW has not significantly marketed its brand TLDs to consumers, and consumer recognition remains low. ### Barclays (.barclays, .barclaycard) Barclays deployed .barclays most successfully in the financial services industry context, using it for specific banking URLs where authenticity is critical and where Barclays has actively educated its customers to look for the .barclays extension as a phishing prevention measure. ## Decision Framework: Should You Apply? Answer these questions to guide your decision: | Question | Yes → | No → | |----------|-------|------| | Annual brand protection budget > $500K? | Continue | Stop: alternatives are better | | Operations team with ICANN experience (or willingness to hire)? | Continue | Stop: operational burden too high | | Clear internal use case (not just defensive)? | Continue | Reconsider: defensive use alone rarely justifies cost | | Trademark registered in your string's jurisdiction? | Continue | Stop: must have trademark basis | | Willing to fund 5+ year programme? | Continue | Stop: brand TLD ROI requires multi-year horizon | | Consumer-facing trust signal is a genuine pain point? | Apply | Consider alternatives | ## Alternatives to Applying If applying does not meet your criteria, consider these lower-cost alternatives: 1. **Defensive DPML (Domain Protected Marks List)**: Register your trademark in the Trademark Clearinghouse (TMCH) and subscribe to DPML — this blocks anyone from registering your trademark as a second-level domain in participating new TLDs. Cost: ~$1,000–$5,000/year. 2. **Defensive Premium Domain (Registry Premium) registration**: Register your brand name in the most significant new TLDs (.app, .io, .ai, .co, etc.) as defensive registrations. Cost: typically $1,000–$20,000/year in total registration fees. 3. **Monitor and takedown**: Use a brand monitoring service to detect infringing domains and pursue UDRP dispute resolution against bad actors. Cost: $5,000–$30,000/year depending on brand exposure. 4. **Wait**: If the 2026 round produces no critical threats, wait and reassess for any future rounds. For the full cost picture, see Cost of Applying for a New TLD: Full Breakdown, and for what happens if you do apply and succeed, see Post-Delegation: Running a TLD Registry. ## The 2026 Landscape for Brand TLD Applicants The 2026 round will see a different mix of brand TLD applicants than 2012. Many large corporations that applied in 2012 have now operated their brand TLDs for a decade and can provide data-driven assessments of value. Those that found genuine utility will reapply with confidence; those that found limited use will not renew their Registry Agreement and will not encourage peers to apply. New entrants to the brand TLD space in 2026 — companies that were not large enough or sophisticated enough to apply in 2012 — include mid-market brands ($500M–$5B revenue), private equity-backed companies seeking brand consolidation, and technology companies that have since built the global brand recognition that makes a brand TLD meaningful. For these new entrants, the decision framework is clearer than it was in 2012 because there is now a decade of operational data to draw from. The question is no longer "will this work?" — we know it can. The question is "does it work for us, given our brand profile, our technical capacity, and our willingness to fund a 5-10 year programme?" Answering that question honestly, before committing the application fee, is the most valuable thing a prospective brand TLD applicant can do. The TLD Comparison Tool can help you benchmark against brand TLDs that launched from the 2012 round and assess which deployment models produced the most strategic value for their operators.