information AMA: We got a Tier 1 parking feed 4 months before everything changed. Ask me anything

[Paul_GiantPanda]

Hello NamePros! I'm Paul, the CRO of Giant Panda (giantpanda.com).

We spent years negotiating for the first new Tier 1 parking feed in over a decade, and were finally approved and launched in November of 2024. Fast forward 4 months, and, as everyone here knows, the Tier 1 ad network began an initiative that will markedly constrain advertiser access to domain traffic.

We have been parking names for years, but in our relatively short time as a parking company I've learned a lot about how the parking ecosystem works. I like to think I have perspective now that I didn't have when we were purely buying and parking names with other companies.

Many of our current clients (hi, y'all) have asked my thoughts on the future of domain traffic monetization, so I thought I'd open up a thread and let anyone ask anything. As the readers of my newsletter know, I like to speak transparently and extensively (maybe too extensively!) about domain parking.

I will be wildly embarrassed if no one responds to this, so, please, ask me anything! About the ideal types of domain traffic? About the reasons for these latest Tier 1 changes? About the past, the present, and future of domain parking? And, of course, I'm happy to talk about Giant Panda, what we do differently, and how we're moving forward into this new era.

This is a sponsored post.​

 

[ezrameura]

Good to see you here, I would like to ask couple of questions -

1. What is the future of domain parking ?

2. What do you think will advertisers come back after recent changes made by google ads ?

3. What kind of domains get the highest EPC (reveal domain niches please) ?

 

[thetrafficman]

The second wave of notice, can AFD be completely separated from arbitrage?

 

[domainerdutch]

I'm an absolute newbie to domain investing. Just bought my first few handregs (this account is a few minutes old :D) and saw this AMA on homepage. And since you encouraged "I'd be embarrassed if no one shows up...please ask me anything" so here goes

- with about a few handregs, is there anything I should consider GiantPanda for? Or am I not the right prospective or at the right stage to even consider this
- what does it mean to be a Tier1 feed? Approved by whom? There are other tiers? What's the ParkingIndustry101 that I should read to get my basics right.

Thanks.

 

[keim123]

Hi, what percentage of advertisers do you think will enable back ? Does parking through zero-click even make sense without Google? Wouldn’t it be better to redirect domains to affiliate programs like Amazon?

 

[Zsolt Bikadi]

I would like to see video ads on parking pages. Is there a chance you can enter this field?

 

[thetrafficman]

I think yahoo's AFD Clicks more than GG's AFD Clicks now.(Page 2)

 

[v5x]

I'm hearing a talk of RSOC (Related Search for Content) replacing AFD on parked domains. But wouldn't parked landers need to have some sort of content?

 

[thetrafficman]

I would like to see video ads on parking pages. Is there a chance you can enter this field?

I think click ads are the simplest model for AFD, the problem with AFD now is that it used to be successful, now it needs to be differentiated from arbitrage, and then the template on the second page needs to be switched back to the previous template to be successful again

 

[biggie]

Hi

Thanks for posting!

can you create/or do you have ppc templates that are similar to what voodoo or namedrive used to have?

imo...

 

[Paul_GiantPanda]

Good to see you here, I would like to ask couple of questions -

1. What is the future of domain parking ?

2. What do you think will advertisers come back after recent changes made by google ads ?

3. What kind of domains get the highest EPC (reveal domain niches please) ?

1. In the immediate future, I think parking becomes a lot more of an omni-channel landscape rather than Tier1 (primary network) and Tier2 (everyone else). We've been exposing more of our traffic to what we once called Tier2 or Alternative and Tier1 still wins almost all of it, but, as this opt-out campaign marches on, I expect those alternative monetization channels to start winning more traffic.

2. I do! Importantly, it has not (yet) been said that they are closing the product line completely. So I'm looking at this as a "full-body cleanse" of the ecosystem. Our industry pushed the envelope really, REALLY hard in terms of dark pattern design over the past few years. Basically, parking companies had been given design tools that weren't even meant for them, and they optimized them to be so clickable that visitors had no idea they were even clicking on ads. Eventually, the advertisers revolted!

The new second pages that were mandated a few months ago were the first response to that. Once the advertisers who feel like they were burned get opted out, the ones who found productive traffic in that channel will opt-back in. I think the channel can live on... perhaps with a more narrow but more productive cohort of advertisers. The ones who find value in our traffic will begin optimizing and paying more for it.

3. Highest EPC names: Deceptively great question! I've had a lot of people ask me what the best niches are for parking, and the reality is there are only two niches:

Traffic with Commercial Intent - huge EPCs
Traffic with Non-commercial Intent - low EPCs

Over the past few years, the Tier1 ad network has been pushing hard to get advertisers to use AI/CPA managed campaigns. The result is that a click's value doesn't exist in a vacuum. It's value is on a spectrum based on the value they think it brought to the advertiser... that could be actions the visitor took on the site, conversion pixels firing, account signups, or, best of all, they made a purchase.

A couple of examples:

Everyone loves to assume insurance-related domains are high EPC/RPM because the product costs a lot of money. But the reality is most traffic coming to the usual insurance name isn't looking to purchase a new insurance plan (commercial intent), but to pay their existing insurance bills, make a claim, etc (non-commercial intent). So the few visitors with commercial intent might make a big purchase from an advertiser and generate a good EPC, but the vast majority of visitors will either not click on an ad or get confused, click an ad, realize they can't pay their bill, and leave (low EPC).

Meanwhile, I see names that have very specific commercial intent to purchase something, and they do $1000+ RPMs, even if the product is low price. We have one name that pops to mind where the visitors are specifically looking for sleep-aid gummies. The product itself is like a sub $15 product, but 100% of the visitors are there to purchase these products. We optimize the keywords with exactly what they're looking for "Gummies to Help You Sleep", they land on an advertiser who sells those gummies, make a purchase, and the domain owner is rewarded with a giant EPC. The RPMs on that name dwarf the RPMs on any insurance name on our platform.

The moral: If you chase the classic idea of "domain niches" you're gonna end up sending a bunch of traffic to advertisers who don't want it, and you'll be paid poor EPCs/RPMs. Find names that have strong commercial intent (like, understand exactly why visitors are coming to that name) and you'll find the highest EPCs/RPMs.

 

[Paul_GiantPanda]

The second wave of notice, can AFD be completely separated from arbitrage?

Honestly, I think that's already happened... sort of. I think most authorized arbitrage has moved on to RSOC. Legit arbitrage has a margin, and the new page designs, advertiser restrictions, and all the other little tweaks made over the past few years have pretty much eliminated that margin.

What remains is all the "non-authorized" arb guys. I see it literally every day... spamming, incentivization, etc. Some are really obvious about it, but some of them (and I know for a fact a few are reading this), are more clever. As a parking company, you really need to look at every name to spot the shenanigans. I shut someone off every day, and see their names pop up with a competitor the next week.

The person who goes to a parked site and clicks on an ad in exchange for some free online game tokens (or whatever) is not providing value for that advertiser's spend. And there are a LOT of people doing shenanigans like this.

So I'm not convinced that arb as a whole is a problem. But shitty arb definitely is.

 

[thetrafficman]

Why can't the second page of the AFD's design be the same as Google's own search page ads (and the yahoo AFD's page)?

 

[Paul_GiantPanda]

I'm an absolute newbie to domain investing. Just bought my first few handregs (this account is a few minutes old :D) and saw this AMA on homepage. And since you encouraged "I'd be embarrassed if no one shows up...please ask me anything" so here goes

- with about a few handregs, is there anything I should consider GiantPanda for? Or am I not the right prospective or at the right stage to even consider this
- what does it mean to be a Tier1 feed? Approved by whom? There are other tiers? What's the ParkingIndustry101 that I should read to get my basics right.

Thanks.

Welcome to domaining! And thank you for asking... anything! I sat here and refreshed this page for like 3 hours last night and fell asleep thinking no one was going to respond. Haha.

- I'd be happy to have your handregs on Giant Panda. That said, hand-registering names with traffic is a business model that some very clever people spend a lot of money on (and build a lot of infrastructure for) in order to be successful. It's not shooting fish in a barrel... it's a zero sum game where one person gets the great traffic name and the rest don't. Don't be discouraged if you don't win at first.

- Tier 1 is code for a large advertising network whose name can not be spoken by those with whom they have contracts. New accounts require approval both by us and, in some cases, by our ad partners. Like I said in another reply, I expect to move more towards an omni-channel rather than Tier1/Tier2: we want to sell your traffic to the channel where it will be most productive, and a grateful advertiser will pay the most for it.

As for Parking Industry 101... I think you're pretty much on it. There are youtube videos and ebooks of course, but industries evolve, and this one is evolving rapidly at the moment. NamePros is a great place to keep on top of those changes.

 

[Paul_GiantPanda]

Hi, what percentage of advertisers do you think will enable back ? Does parking through zero-click even make sense without Google? Wouldn’t it be better to redirect domains to affiliate programs like Amazon?

Percentage Opt-In: I honestly don't know. I've heard rumors this was tested in a particular geolocation a couple of months back, and the opt-in rate was very low. But there are a lot of factors at play... a geo-based cohort wouldn't be the ideal test for something like this, in my mind (assuming that rumor is even true). We'll have a better idea once this first cohort is opted out on March 19th.

More importantly, I think, is that the advertisers who opt back in will do so because they find value in our traffic. And an immutable law of internet marketing is that if a traffic buyer finds a productive traffic source, he will buy every bit of it he can get.

Zero-click: great question! For years, we've strongly held the belief that Tier1 is the network with the breadth and depth of advertisers to best support the inherently diverse intent of organic domain traffic. I still believe that. As this opt-out initiative continues and the advertiser base shrinks, we might find that zero-click wins more.

That said, there are different kinds of zero-click/RTB which get lumped together when I see people discuss it.

Brand Advertisers Zero-click: these are redirects, often from typos, into the intended destination of the traffic. These are win-win situations if the brand approves of it, and I'm seeing some major brands start to relax their stances on it.

Semi-targeted Zero-click: We can define the general intent of the user (they're looking for weight loss injections) and there's an advertiser willing to buy their eyeballs directly. Again, this all comes down to defining the visitors' intent on every name.

Affiliate Zero-click: again, if we can define that a visitor wants something particular and that intent can be most profitably satisfied by an affiliate deal (even Amazon), then that's where they should be sent.

Run-of-network Zero-click: these are the advertisers selling a product they feel could be applicable to a wide swath of visitors, and are willing to bid some base amount for anyone... maybe the bid goes up or down a smidge depending on geolocation or browser signatures. I don't love this tranche of advertisers, because it's usually where the less savory "products" appear. But it might someday outperform Tier 1 on traffic without any true commercial intent, so we have it as an option but allow our clients to opt their names out of it.

These are all becoming separate channels on Giant Panda alongside the PPC channels. Ultimately, defining the visitors' intent on each name is what allows us to send them to the best possible channel to monetize. Without that (painstakingly arduous) work, you're just shooting visitors off to random monetization partners based on dubious metrics.

 

[Paul_GiantPanda]

I would like to see video ads on parking pages. Is there a chance you can enter this field?

So would I!

Video is a totally viable monetization channel for some types of organic traffic, and I am not at all surprised you thought of it. We are in the very early stages of developing that channel. You'll be the first to know.

 

[Paul_GiantPanda]

I think yahoo's AFD Clicks more than GG's AFD Clicks now.(Page 2)

Maybe so. But eventually Yahoo/Verizon's advertisers will also grow tired of burning money on minimally targeted clicks.

To move forward as an industry and re-establish the value of organic domain traffic, I believe we need to evolve beyond the construct of getting visitors to click based on inertia and dark pattern design. The ad networks aren't in the business of helping domainers make money; they're in the business of helping their advertisers make money.

I think the parking companies, to this point, were very much in the business of helping domainers (and themselves) make money, which is how our industry ended up burning a lot of advertiser budgets.

 

[Paul_GiantPanda]

I'm hearing a talk of RSOC (Related Search for Content) replacing AFD on parked domains. But wouldn't parked landers need to have some sort of content?

I think that is very likely. To my knowledge, that product for organic domain traffic doesn't exist yet so I can't speak to the specific requirements, but I think it has the potential to be very productive both for advertisers and traffic domainers.

Afterall, content is cheap now thanks to LLM's!

The challenge will be defining the visitor intent and structuring that content in a way that either doesn't impede existing commercial intent, or, arguably more exciting, creates commercial intent where there was none to begin.

With arbitraged traffic, you can define commercial intent from the start. But with organic domain traffic, the visitors have all sorts of mixed intent... some might be looking to buy a product, some might be looking to watch free sports streams, and some might be trying to download their payroll stubs. Content generation gives us an opportunity to modify the non-commercial intent and create value.

 

[Paul_GiantPanda]

I think click ads are the simplest model for AFD, the problem with AFD now is that it used to be successful, now it needs to be differentiated from arbitrage, and then the template on the second page needs to be switched back to the previous template to be successful again

I agree... it's definitely the simplest model! And it worked great for us domainers for years! It apparently didn't work as well for a lot of advertisers though, or we wouldn't see them in forums publicly celebrating this mass opt-out plan.

That second page template ain't going back to what it was. We are finding ways to optimize it within the very restrictive boundaries they allow, but the days of tweaking the spacing and color contrasts to the point where a visitor doesn't even know he's clicking on an ad? Those days are gone. Be thankful the industry was able to get away with it for as long as we did, but prepare to evolve your business mindset.

I also agree that arbitrage and organic are different channels and should be treated differently. I look at this as an opportunity for those of us committed to organic traffic to develop and advocate for what that differentiated channel should look like to best benefit all the stakeholders in the ecosystem: advertisers, ad networks, AND domainers.

 

[Bravo Mod Team]

Hey Paul, thanks for doing an APA (Ask Pros Anything) on NamePros! This is a very timely topic and great opportunity to talk to someone with experience in the space.

A few questions:

1. Congrats on Rick Schwartz using your service for some of his domains! How'd that come to be?
2. Why did it take years to get a Tier 1 feed from Google? It hadn't happened in a long time but there haven't been many public details on why or the challenges involved. That'd be interesting to read about.
3. How big is your company's domain portfolio?
4. Why did you decide to create your own parking service? Did the existing solutions lack something that you wanted?

Thanks again for this discussion!

 

[Future Sensors]

If pandas could suddenly talk and give us one piece of advice about life, what do you think they'd say, considering they spend most of their time eating and napping?

 

[Paul_GiantPanda]

Hi

Thanks for posting!

can you create/or do you have ppc templates that are similar to what voodoo or namedrive used to have?

imo...

Thanks for having me!

I'll need you to remind me what Voodoo and Namedrive's PPC templates look like. I've been in domain-adjacent businesses all my professional life, but only full time traffic domaining for the past 7-8 years.

If they looked anything substantially different than what you've been seeing on Tier1 PPC landers for the past 7-8 years, then, no, we don't. And we can't.

The landers you see today are designed in a WYSIWYG editor provided by the ad network. You have the CAF (the box in the center containing keywords and ads, which is served by the ad network itself) and then the frame around it. You can tweak a limited set of CSS attributes within the CAF (colors, some spacing, fonts) and you can design the frame around it however you want with approvals. But you can't really just go wild, design a whole Tier1 parking page from scratch HTML, and then drop ad links in it. It's very restrictive, and, now, the second page is even more restrictive.

I think another benefit of this move to a more omni-channel domain monetization world is that we can test ideas like "what if a parking page looked like this" with different monetization channels.

 

[Paul_GiantPanda]

Hey Paul, thanks for doing an APA (Ask Pros Anything) on NamePros! This is a very timely topic and great opportunity to talk to someone with experience in the space.

A few questions:

1. Congrats on Rick Schwartz using your service for some of his domains! How'd that come to be?
2. Why did it take years to get a Tier 1 feed from Google? It hadn't happened in a long time but there haven't been many public details on why or the challenges involved. That'd be interesting to read about.
3. How big is your company's domain portfolio?
4. Why did you decide to create your own parking service? Did the existing solutions lack something that you wanted?

Thanks again for this discussion!

Oops! Didn't know it was supposed to be called an "Ask Pros Anything". I'll do better on the next one, I swear!

1. Rick Schwartz is a legend, obviously. And he has known our own legendary Rick (Rick Latona, CEO) for a long time. I think maybe Ricks have some sort of blood oath to support other Ricks.

2. But, seriously, GiantPanda had been operating as a middleman keyword optimization service for many years. We landed the traffic, researched the intent of the visitors, set keywords to monetize that intent, and then forwarded it along to our partner parking companies. Rick Schwartz and a whole host of other legendary domainers have been using our keyword optimization service for many years... not because they were friends with Rick Latona, but because keyword optimization works very well.

During those years, we were often frustrated by the technical limitations of our position within the ecosystem. We spent 100,000 man hours figuring out the best strategies to optimize keywords, the most impactful factor of the 2-click parking process. But we couldn't put that same effort into the rest of the process because we were just a middlelayer service between the domain owner and the parking companies.

Maybe 5 or 6 years ago, we began petitioning Tier1 for our own feed. I think Rick (Latona) gave probably 20 full-blown presentations to them in that time. Slideshows and all! And in each of those presentations, he showed them everything we were doing, explained what more we could do with our own feed, and generally tried to prove the idea that a human could determine the intent of a domain visitor better than their first page keyword algorithm was doing.

Pardon the digression:

Tier1 is the undisputed champion of the world at the function of the second page: matching a keyword with an advertiser who wants to pay for that intent. That's their core business, a business they basically invented, and they're absolutely brilliant at it.

I think they're less good at the function of the first page: determining a parked domain visitors intent, and matching it with a keyword. Frankly, it's a difficult problem to solve algorithmically! And even with the rapid rise of AI models, which we've tested extensively, it still misses the mark often.

Is a visitor to an online streaming service trying to sign up for the service, or just connect their new Roku to an existing service?

Is a visitor to a university domain trying to apply for admission, sign up for a class, or buy tickets to the next football game?

Are the visitors to a domain which someone randomly posted on their Instagram profile coming to buy custom merch or hoping to see provocative videos? Someone's gotta look at the Instagram account to figure it out!

I do not work for Tier1 and do not claim to know anything about their internal deliberations, but I like to imagine they agreed to give GiantPanda the first new feed in a decade because our keyword optimization fills an important gap in the ecosystem: determining the wide, hugely varied intent of organic domain traffic.

3 (and 4). We were traffic domainers before we were a parking company. The tools that became Giant Panda were originally built to maximize revenue on our own portfolio which is, last I checked, somewhere in the 6 figures range.

After a year or two of optimizing keywords on our own portfolio with our partner parking companies, word got out and we began optimizing keywords for some of the biggest, most well known traffic portfolio owners in the business.

I have no quarrel with the partner parking companies we worked with for many years. I love them (Shoutout to PC and SN). The biggest factor in our decision to get our own feed for GiantPanda was the technical limitations of being a middlelayer service.

That said, I think the multiple-of-earnings allure of arbitrage may have caused parking companies to de-prioritize organic domain traffic. I get it!

"Arbitrage makes like 20x more money than organic, so let's focus resources on that."

And as a result, there hasn't been much innovation in the organic domain traffic world for the past few years.

We've always been organic traffic domainers. That was our focus when we were only optimizing our own keywords, continues to be our priority now that we're a fully-fledged parking company with 3rd party clients, and will be our guiding light as we navigate the rocky near-future of domain monetization.

 

[Paul_GiantPanda]

If pandas could suddenly talk and give us one piece of advice about life, what do you think they'd say, considering they spend most of their time eating and napping?

Finally, someone's asking the important questions.

I've never spent one-on-one time with a giant panda, but there's a stock photo of one on our website, and I often find myself staring deeply into his expressive, soulful eyes.

Profoundly Zen Domain Parking Panda

I'm staring at him now, and I think he would advise:

"Never trust a backlink from an SEO link exchange."

Followed by:

"And would it kill you to call your mother at the zoo in San Diego? She misses you, YangYang."

 

[itsmeIori]

I have no knowledge about the domain parking biz, thank you for contributing to the industry (:
We like every one doing something in our industry (;