[gnso-rpm-wg] TMCH data on abandonment

[George Kirikos]

P.S. Depending on the exact mechanics of the Claims Notices from a
registry's perspective (perhaps the registries can chime in), if some
"adds" are in a pending state for a few hours/days, etc., pending
acceptance of the Claims Notice by the prospective registrant, and
then are later *deleted*, then domain deletion statistics in those
first 3 months might be a secondary source of data, if those were
reported to ICANN, and/or kept track privately by individual registry
operators.

The same "event study" methodology would be employed. For those not
familiar with the event studies, think of it kind of like an A/B
study, where the "A" and "B" are different time periods surrounding
"the event", and all the time-series/cross-section data is "shifted"
to be able to compare apples to apples and oranges to oranges (i.e.
you're recalibrating all the data, so that the "event" is the only
major variable that is changing, and all the other variables get
averaged out as random noise that is uncorrelated to the event being
studied).

Sincerely,

George Kirikos
416-588-0269
http://www.leap.com/



On Fri, Jun 9, 2017 at 11:23 AM, George Kirikos <icann at leap.com> wrote:
> Hi folks,
>
> On Fri, Jun 9, 2017 at 10:56 AM, Kurt Pritz <kurt at kjpritz.com> wrote:
>> We can ask for a study, but I am pretty darned sure the information we want
>> is not available. We have no data on this issue to guide the discussion.
>
> There actual *is* a source of data that can help determine whether
> there is a significant difference caused by the TM Claims notice, in
> particular, the monthly ICANN Registry reports:
>
> https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/registry-reports
>
> Let's pick out an example report, for .xyz in Feb 2017:
>
> https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/xyz-2014-06-19-en
>
> There's a transactions report:
>
> https://www.icann.org/sites/default/files/mrr/xyz/xyz-transactions-201702-en.csv
>
> which has columns which include not just "net adds" (new domains
> registered), but more importantly "attempted-adds".
>
> One can take the ratio of adds vs attempted adds (across all
> registrars, or filtering for some that might exclude outliers) and use
> that as a proxy for a "conversion rate", and compare that over time,
> and across multiple TLDs.
>
> If folks are familiar with the concept of "event studies":
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Event_study
> http://www.investopedia.com/terms/e/eventstudy.asp
> http://www.bauer.uh.edu/rsusmel/phd/lecture%206.pdf
> http://web.mit.edu/doncram/www/eventstudy.html
>
> used in empirical research, the "event" is essentially the ending of
> the claims period (i.e. if there's an impact, we should see a
> statistical difference in the above ratio in the period from 0-3
> months after GA when the Claims Notices are shown to registrants, and
> in the period 4 months+ after GA when the Claims Notices are NOT shown
> to registrants. We have time series data, and a cross-section of TLDs
> (akin to different "stocks", when those are financial event studies).
>
> One would have to make some minor adjustments to take into account
> that the end of the claims notices doesn't fall "neatly" at the exact
> end of a month. And of course the first month of the GA (where there's
> much more activity after a launch) might be expected to be different
> from months 2 and 3, in terms of those averages. But, probably months
> 2 and 3 should be "normal" for a claims notice effect, and months 4
> and beyond "normal" for a non-claims notice effect. One would also
> need to take into account possible effects from GA "anniversary dates"
> (i.e. GA+12 months, +24 months, +36 months), where data might be
> skewed somewhat by large amounts of expiring domain names ("drop
> catching" might impact "attempted adds", if they're automated
> inquiries).
>
> So, I do believe we do have a valuable and valid source of data *now*,
> namely running an event study with the above data and methodology,
> comparing adds to attempted adds using each of the registry's public
> historical data provided to ICANN in the monthly reports. It can even
> be compared against .com/net/org/biz/info etc., which have no claims
> notice at all, to see if there are statistical differences.
>
> It's a lot of grunt work (I won't be doing it), but something a
> graduate statistics/econometrics student would be capable of doing
> easily. All the data is already in electronic form, too (although, one
> would need to get exact "GA" dates from the registry operators or
> ICANN, or IBM/Deloitte, to calculate GA+3 months properly).
>
> It's not as "direct" as getting the data directly from registrars (I'm
> not sure why they'd not share that data; they can either do it
> anonymously, or just share the "change", without sharing their actual
> cart abandonment data), but it should suffice, to help solve the
> question *now*, in this PDP, rather than waiting another 10 or 20
> years.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> George Kirikos
> 416-588-0269
> http://www.leap.com/