In Spain, one in five crimes are already digital, according to data from the Ministry of Interior, in a country that ranks among the most attacked in the world, and that typically sits among the top spots in Europe for incident volume. A situation that endangers not only users’ security, but the integrity of companies and brands with an online presence. And brand impersonation to commit cyberfraud is now joined by the rise of artificial intelligence in information access, which reduces companies’ direct control over their web traffic.
In this new scenario, and as Ubilibet notes, the web domain has ceased to be an access point and has become a strategic branding element that provides trust and integrity to the user.
Thus arise the Brand TLDs, which began to be adopted after ICANN opened new domains in 2012, and now are receiving a new push ahead of the next round of applications planned for this year. They are considered by experts as “the most significant shift in how brands can protect themselves online”, as notes Mónica Sorribas, Legal & Brand Protection Manager. “We are talking about having your own domain extension: a digital space exclusive where everything that happens is under the brand’s control, and where impersonation simply stops making sense,” she adds.
What Brand TLDs Are
Unlike generic domains, which include the traditional .com or .net, and even the newer wave of domains that appeared from 2014 onward, evoking city names (.madrid) and generic terms (.app, .club, or .shop), Brand TLDs display the exact name and brand of a company or business, in a way that is exclusive and guarantees security and identity on the Internet, since no one else can use them without consent. Some examples include .seat, .apple, .mango, or .bbva.
These own, exclusive domain extensions allow building closed, coherent, and more resilient web ecosystems against brand impersonation and fraud, providing users with a layer of trust that reinforces security and the company’s credibility.
“The URL is not a technical detail, but one of the first contact points with the customer, and sometimes the only one, so in that first impression we are already playing with credibility, recognition and trust,” notes Mónica Sorribas. Hence, they allow brands and businesses to protect their digital identity with domains like ‘www.tienda.ubilibet’ or ‘www.promociones.ubilibet’, giving the company the ability to craft a broader and more resilient digital communication and distribution strategy.
Tips for Strengthening Online Presence with a Brand TLD
The Ubilibet team has gathered some best practices to ensure the Brand TLD strategy pays off. Among them are choosing a clear, coherent URL that is easy to identify from the first click. “A simple address converts more; it’s that straightforward,” notes Sorribas, who adds that “the easier it is to remember, to type, and to recognize, the higher the chances that users will click and come back.”
However, there’s little value in a URL that’s easily recognizable if that simplicity also enables cybercriminals to imitate the legitimate site and scam users. Therefore, from Ubilibet they recommend organizing each company’s digital ecosystem on the Internet to help users identify and find legitimate websites, something Brand TLDs assist with by containing the brand itself in the domain name.
“If you concentrate your identity under your own domain ‘.yourbrand’, you can build whatever you need—from global pages to local versions—without ambiguity, because the domain itself speaks for you, signaling to users that they are on the official site,” says Mónica Sorribas. “That, today, is priceless if we want to protect ourselves on the Internet.”
More and more multinationals are choosing to register their Brand TLD to reinforce their digital communications campaigns or strengthen their presence online. However, the greater ease of registering a Brand TLD is prompting many companies to reserve their exclusive domain name for long-term positioning. And this process works differently from traditional domain registration, since it must be applied to ICANN, the body that regulates domain names, through one of the application windows it periodically opens.
