iQ Market Intelligence: Competitive Intelligence for the Domain Industry

Pilot: Founding Customer Opportunity

When the market changes faster than your visibility, you end up responding to competitor moves rather than defining strategy.

As a registrar, you may operate in one market with a handful of competitors, or across multiple markets while monitoring only a few closely. Either way, the pattern is familiar. A competitor launches a campaign, adjusts pricing, or changes portfolio positioning, and you discover it weeks later. By then, the move has already affected volumes, margins, and share.

If you are a registry, the questions differ but the problem is the same. Are registrars running the campaigns they agreed to, and are those campaigns performing as expected? How is your TLD priced in key markets versus comparable alternatives? Whether you manage a small portfolio or a large one, how do you benchmark performance systematically without turning competitive intelligence into a permanent internal project?

Manual analysis does not scale. An analyst team costs hundreds of thousands per year and still only covers a subset of markets. Agencies can cost a similar order of magnitude for monthly reporting, but the pace is too slow. Dashboards provide data, not decisions.

iQ Market Intelligence is a competitive intelligence service for the domain industry, delivered on a cadence you choose. You receive reports customized to your competitors, markets, and TLDs, including what changed, why it matters, and what to do about it.

In practice, this serves pricing leaders, marketing leaders, strategy/GM roles, and commercial/product stakeholders. It is built for serious operators (registrars, hosting groups, and registries of all sizes), while still being usable by smaller teams that start with a narrow scope and expand as value is proven.

The Foundation

iQ Market Intelligence is built on three years of competitive intelligence infrastructure and operational validation.

Price Tracker has operated since 2022, continuously monitoring domain pricing across European markets. The system tracks 1.6 million pricing records across 16 markets, covering 150+ competitors and 186 TLDs. This data foundation provides comprehensive visibility into competitive pricing, campaign activity, and market dynamics.

Intelligence production capability has been validated through extensive development work. As described in our recent post about Intelligence as a Service, the framework enables AI agents to autonomously execute intelligence workflows: data collection, analysis, synthesis, and delivery. During framework development, 50+ competitive intelligence reports validated that the system produces consistent, professional-grade output.

Production efficiency makes regular intelligence delivery economically viable. Most organizations do competitive analysis as an occasional project (quarterly at best, often less), because doing it properly takes real time. The service changes that dynamic: whether you want monthly, bi-weekly, or weekly reporting, the underlying production workflow is efficient enough to support a steady cadence without requiring an internal analyst team.

Domain industry expertise is embedded throughout the system. The framework understands TLD pricing dynamics, campaign structures, registrar and registry relationships, and market-specific behaviors. This domain knowledge ensures the intelligence produced addresses what actually matters in competitive analysis, not generic business metrics.

The framework produces reliable, professional-grade output with sustainable economics. The service is ready for founding customers who will help refine it for broader availability.

What You Receive

Reports are delivered on your schedule (daily, weekly, bi-weekly, monthly) in your preferred format (concise email summaries, detailed PDFs, or executive briefings). Delivery is via email by default, with alternatives available (Slack, Microsoft Teams, API integration, dashboard access) configured during onboarding.

Each report is customized to your specific needs, but typically includes:

• Competitive Positioning Analysis: Where you rank versus competitors in each market. Who is gaining or losing share, and why.
• Campaign Activity Monitoring: Which competitors launched or ended campaigns this period, on which TLDs, with what messaging and pricing.
• Pricing Change Alerts: Competitor pricing movements across markets and TLDs. Significant changes are highlighted with context.
• Portfolio Gap Analysis: TLDs your competitors offer that you do not, and vice versa. Opportunities for portfolio expansion.
• Cross-Market Insights: Patterns across your markets. Where you perform consistently well, where you face challenges, and what drives the differences.
• Strategic Recommendations: Actionable insights aligned to your priorities (growth, defending position, expansion, premium positioning). Not just data, but strategic direction that helps you respond faster.

This is configured during onboarding: we capture what your team is optimizing for, what markets and competitors matter most, how you define success, and what constraints you operate under. Recommendations are then framed to match that context (and refined as your priorities shift), rather than providing generic "best practice" advice.

How This Works for Different Organizations

Intelligence needs vary significantly across the domain industry. What matters for a single-TLD registry differs from what matters for a portfolio operator or a multi-market registrar. The service is designed to adapt to these different requirements.

Registries

Organization profile: Operates one TLD or a portfolio across multiple markets. Needs visibility into registrar campaign activity, pricing versus comparable alternatives, and changes in competitive positioning.

How iQ Market Intelligence would work:

Regular reporting (on your preferred cadence) benchmarks performance in key markets and flags significant changes. For example, if a TLD drops 15% in a major market while a comparable competing TLD gains share, the report provides context (campaign activity, pricing movements, and market dynamics) and includes recommended responses.

For single-TLD operators (including ccTLDs and major gTLDs), reporting focuses on registrar engagement: which registrars are promoting your TLD, how pricing is evolving versus competing alternatives, and which major registrars are not offering the TLD (an outreach opportunity). This replaces ad-hoc or quarterly consultant work with a steady, decision-ready view.

For portfolios, reporting helps you see where to focus attention across the portfolio without turning competitive intelligence into a permanent internal project.

Value delivered: Clear, ongoing visibility into pricing, campaigns, and performance, plus practical guidance for registrar engagement, delivered on a predictable cadence.

Registrars

Organization profile: Competes in one market with many active competitors, operates across multiple markets, or is expanding into adjacent markets. Typically monitors a small subset of competitors and markets closely, with limited visibility beyond top priorities.

How iQ Market Intelligence would work:

Regular reporting (on your preferred cadence) provides systematic market coverage: competitive positioning, campaign activity, pricing changes, and cross-market patterns where relevant. Alerts flag major moves (for example, a competitor launching campaigns across multiple TLDs in a key market) with an assessment of likely impact so you can respond quickly.

For expansion, reporting focuses on the markets where you are entering: who the key players are, what strategies they use, and what positioning is working. If an approach that works in your home market does not translate to the new market, the report explains why and recommends alternatives based on observed competitive behavior.

Value delivered: Better visibility across the markets that matter, earlier awareness of competitive moves, and clearer positioning decisions without building an internal competitive intelligence function.

Industry Actors and Regulators

Organization profile: Monitors industry-wide competitive behavior. Needs pricing intelligence, market health indicators, and ability to detect potentially problematic competitive practices.

How iQ Market Intelligence would work:

Monthly reporting provides aggregate trends (pricing movements, campaign intensity, market concentration indicators) and anomaly detection. Significant changes are flagged for investigation (for example, a registrar increasing prices 40% across all TLDs).

Value delivered: Comprehensive industry intelligence, early detection of potentially problematic behavior, systematic market health monitoring, all delivered regularly without manual survey effort.

Founding Customer Benefits

Founding customers are a small cohort and receive a few practical benefits:

• Fast onboarding and iteration: configure what matters, deliver an initial report, then refine quickly until the output matches how your team makes decisions.
• Product influence: direct input into reporting structure and priorities based on real usage.
• Predictable terms: 24-month rate lock and clearly defined scope.
• Enterprise fit: clear success criteria for the pilot and a confidentiality-first approach by default.

Selection Criteria

We are looking for diversity across several dimensions:

Organization types: The service is designed to support registries (both large portfolios and smaller operators), registrars (multi-market and regional players), and potentially other industry actors. Different organization types have different intelligence needs, and working with diverse founding customers helps validate that the framework adapts appropriately to this range.

Use case variety: The service supports multiple intelligence needs. Having founding customers with different primary use cases (portfolio benchmarking, expansion market intelligence, registrar partner enablement, industry oversight) helps validate that the framework adapts appropriately to diverse requirements.

Commitment to feedback: The pilot phase is explicitly about learning and refinement. We are looking for organizations that will engage seriously with the intelligence, provide honest feedback about what works and what does not, and help us understand how to make the service more valuable. This is not a passive subscription, it is an active partnership to mature the product.

Strategic fit: Organizations that view competitive intelligence as strategically important, have tried other approaches (consultants, internal analysis, agency reports), and understand the value of regular, systematic intelligence rather than ad-hoc analysis.

How to Explore the Pilot

If iQ Market Intelligence addresses intelligence needs you are currently struggling to meet, here is how to explore whether the pilot is a fit:

Step 1: Discovery Call (30 minutes)

Schedule an initial conversation to discuss your competitive intelligence requirements. Topics explored include:

• Which markets you operate in or monitor
• Which competitors matter most to you
• What TLDs are relevant to your situation
• What intelligence you currently receive (if any) and what gaps exist
• How you would use weekly (or daily, or monthly) competitive intelligence
• Whether the founding customer pilot makes sense for your organization

Email hello@iq.global to schedule.

Step 2: Custom Demo

For organizations where the discovery call indicates strong fit, we generate a sample analysis for one of your markets or TLDs. This demonstrates exactly what you would receive: actual intelligence relevant to your competitive situation, in a format you can customize.

You see what the service delivers before making any commitment. We discuss customization options, pilot pricing and terms, and any questions about how this would work for your specific situation.

Step 3: Pilot Decision

If both sides agree there is good fit, pilot onboarding proceeds. Week 1: service configuration for your specific requirements. Week 2: first intelligence report delivered. Weeks 3-4: refinement based on your feedback. Within the first month, you have competitive intelligence flowing regularly.

If This Is Relevant for Your Team

If you want clearer visibility into competitor campaigns, pricing, and positioning without competitive intelligence becoming an internal project, the simplest next step is a short conversation: hello@iq.global.