auDA launches new "Aussies get it" campaign
Following the release of the 2025 "Why .au?" research paper in February, auDA has launched a marketing campaign to highlight the key insights:
- Half of Australian consumers will only buy online from a website ending in
.au - Three in four trust an Australian business if its website address ends in
.au - 70% of small businesses with a domain name choose
.aufor their website or business email - Customers look out for
.auwebsite or email address to verify that a business is credible, especially when they discover it via social media.
Why would anyone targeting Australian customers choose anything else?
Featuring Aussie icons like an Aussie-rules football, a surf-lifesaving cap, fairy bread, and a wombat road sign, the “Aussies get it” campaign celebrates items that are "uniquely and iconically Australian", just like the .au domain space.
We love the new campaign and hope you do too. The full auDA media release can be found here.
Do we agree with everything auDA says? No.
In explaining which domain extension to choose for your domain name, auDA provides the following guidance:
com.au: the most trusted and recognised commercial namespace in Australianet.au: a trusted choice for tech-focused Australian businesses.audirect: The newer, shorter Australian domain name for your new idea or side hustle.
I can't imagine many new businesses are registering their .com.au domains without also registering the 'direct' .au, and vice-versa. And, through our continuous testing, we're aware that most big brands with established .com.au presences (both digitally with websites and physically in the form of brand assets like advertising, livery, business cards, etc.) have already registered their .au direct domains, too.
Given the advantages of the shorter, trendier .au direct domain name extension, we anticipate it's just a matter of time before there's a wholesale transition to this extension as the default choice for primary domain names of any purpose.
If you have a different opinion, perhaps you've recently commissioned a website and chose a .com.au domain as your primary, I'd love to hear from you to understand why. Please get in touch.
And if you're targeting an Australian market and still using an extension that doesn't end in .au, there's a very good chance you're missing out.
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