The Association of National Advertisers (ANA) has slammed plans by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) to allow just about any word to become a top-level domain (TLD).

The ANA has written to the president of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), Rod Beckstrom, flagging major flaws in the new TLD program.

Website and domain name auction site, Flippa, has released its inaugural State of the Website Economy report, focusing on domain names.

Among the interesting findings of Flippa’s State of the Website Economy July 2011 are that websites and domain names with .com domain extensions have a 124 percent greater chance of selling on Flippa than .co domains, and that dashes in a domain name reduce the average sales price by 26 percent.

Domain name and Internet services provider Tucows Inc. has acquired German domain name registrar EPAG Domainservices GmbH for approximately US$2.5 million (€1.75 million) in cash. Tucows will pay €1.5 million to purchase the shares of EPAG from QSC AG and €0.25 million to settle a working capital adjustment.

EPAG, based in Bonn, Germany, is an ICANN-accredited registrar which manages more than 400,000 domains and over 200 Top Level Domains (TLDs). Tucows intends to continue serving EPAG’s customers and resellers, as well as integrate EPAG’s domain services into its own OpenSRS wholesale domain registration service.

Domain names appearing in pay-per-click (PPC) ads that include the same keywords as those typed in by search engine users may deliver double the number of clicks as other domain names.

In a recent study by U.K. based Memorable Domains, identical advertisements for three domains were displayed on Google Adwords. The only difference between the ads was the domain name shown.

Add Disney to the list of major companies that have forgotten to review key domain names. In Disney’s case, it forgot to renew the Club Penguin domain name – that same Club Penguin for which Disney was willing to pay up to $700 million.

Fortunately for Disney, the company managed to recover the domain name and, following a period during which the site was down, the site is back to normal now.

In an almost unanimous vote, ICANN‘s Board of Directors has approved the plan to allow for the availability of more generic top-level domains (gTLDs).

With 13 voting in favor, 1 opposed, and 2 abstaining from the vote, the Board’s decision follows many years of debate and discussion within the Internet community. The upshot is that anyone will be able to apply to have a new gTLD approved by ICANN, provided they meet various financial and other requirements.

The premium domain name Pay.com is for sale. You can lodge your bid by getting in touch with DomainerAdvisors, which is handling the sale. But what do you think it’s worth?

I reckon pay.com is worth a lot, considering it’s a three letter domain and has strong brand appeal for anyone involved in the online payments or a finance related field.

Reporting its financial results for the first quarter of 2011, Demand Media, Inc. has good and bad news for shareholders. The good news is that revenues have jumped 48 percent compared with those in the first quarter of 2010. The bad news is that the company’s loss has also increased.

Demand Media’s revenues hit $79.5 million in the first quarter of 2011, 48 percent higher than the $53.6 million earned in Q110. The company’s operating loss, however, increased by 31 percent – from $3.2 million in Q110 to $4.2 million in Q111. Its net loss climbed 37 percent – from $4.1 million in the first quarter of last year to $5.6 million in Q111.

Based on data from Domainer Income gamesforgirls.com was the highest selling domain name at a public auction in the first quarter of 2011. Sedo brokered the deal, which saw gamesforgirls.com go for an impressive USD $500,000.

It turns out that Sedo brokered most of the big-value domain name sales in Q1, except for electricity.com.au (AUD $30,933), which Australian broker Netfleet handled.

On Thursday Google won its lawsuit against a bunch of Internet marketers selling products promising, among other things, “Easy Cash with Google”.

The U.S. District Court judge, Judge Bruce S. Jenkins issued a permanent injunction and a $1.6 million judgment against Bloosky Interactive LLC (trading as Just Think Media, Online Cash Success Kit, Quick Profit Kit, JDW Media and Edirect Software), Crush LLC, Hyper Interactive Media LLC and Search 4 Profit LLC.