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OMG now 100% Fairfax

Shane

Top Contributor
I had a fellow from Fairfax call me yesterday about some advertising, and he told me that they've now taken 100% ownership of OMG.

It will be interesting to see if they are more interested or less interested in selling their domains now...
 

Honan

Top Contributor
I had a fellow from Fairfax call me yesterday about some advertising, and he told me that they've now taken 100% ownership of OMG.

It will be interesting to see if they are more interested or less interested in selling their domains now...

Did Fairfax buy out Dean Shannon or am I out of date?
Did Dean need the funds for a plurge on the new TLDs?
 

Joel

Top Contributor
I contacted OMG yesterday to enquire about a domain and got an autoreply stating:
"Thank you for your email. OMG (Online Marketing Group) will be ceasing operations on 31 January 2016, and this e-mail
address will no longer be in use."
I just want to buy a domain :(

NB: apologies for grave-digging the thread :)
 
I contacted OMG yesterday to enquire about a domain and got an autoreply stating:
"Thank you for your email. OMG (Online Marketing Group) will be ceasing operations on 31 January 2016, and this e-mail
address will no longer be in use."
I just want to buy a domain :(

NB: apologies for grave-digging the thread :)
interesting - have they sold their portfolio ? They have a lot of great names like jobs.com.au, lawyers.com.au and business.com.au.
 

Shane

Top Contributor
some of their directory sites had a massive number of businesses with decent annual fees, for example business.com.au and lawyers.com.au
I advertised on their financialplanners.com.au website for two years. Didn't get a single lead!
Worked well for them I guess, but advertisers stop paying when the results aren't there...
 

Bacon Farmer

Top Contributor
Wow both lawyers and business .com.au are down for the count. And gasp creditcards too.
Fairfax were quick to buy successful dot com businesses like stayz, rsvp, investsmart etc.
When they purchased the OMG portfolio they should have developed the areas of human interest that they didn't yet cover (like they did with domain.com.au in the real estate arena).
For example, Wealth.com.au and MobilePhones.com.au.
The directory concept was good but they should have been an add on to information portals for things like business or lawyers.
Fairfax should have developed them as brands using their other content resources and not as an after thought.
They didn't have an overall plan and they didn't leverage their strengths. They just weren't listening to the right people.
 

snoopy

Top Contributor
Wow both lawyers and business .com.au are down for the count. And gasp creditcards too.
Fairfax were quick to buy successful dot com businesses like stayz, rsvp, investsmart etc.
When they purchased the OMG portfolio they should have developed the areas of human interest that they didn't yet cover (like they did with domain.com.au in the real estate arena).
For example, Wealth.com.au and MobilePhones.com.au.
The directory concept was good but they should have been an add on to information portals for things like business or lawyers.
Fairfax should have developed them as brands using their other content resources and not as an after thought.
They didn't have an overall plan and they didn't leverage their strengths. They just weren't listening to the right people.

These are all dead areas, directory sites, building stuff out for no good reason (i.e. because they own a domain). Not saying any of this was predictable, but since 2012 Google changes to EMD's that whole area has been dying. In hindsight the best move they could have made was probably not to buy the portfolio. Too late to ask for a refund now, just a decision that turned out badly which is something we all do.

Best usage now is probably parking pages in my view. Allocate 1 guy to spend a couple of hours a day handling inquiries, or sell them off in auctions.
 

DomainNames

Top Contributor
I had heard Fairfax bought the OMG / Boomerang portfolio years ago for around $30 Million but I do not have evidence of this except someone at Fairfax telling me previously. With approximately 30,000 .com.au names in the OMG / Boomerang portfolio at the time this would equate to $1000 per name.

They have made substantial money over the years from some of their generic domains via online directories and also Creditcards.com.au, Lawyers.com.au etc.

Fairfax would have done well to develop more domains into sites. There is some great online brand name opportunities there still.
 

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