CNN MONEY — Aug 18 — Online dating has shrugged off its social stigma and emerged as a mainstream means for singles to find that special someone. The U.S. online dating industry is expected to climb 9% year-over-year with revenues of $516 million in 2005, said Nate Elliott, an analyst at Jupiter Research. That's slower than the 19% growth in 2004. And 77% in 2003. There are currently nearly 1,000 dating Web sites, said Bill Tancer of Hitwise, and one out of every 100 people logging on to the internet visits an online dating site. Niche sites are popular. Social networking sites have become increasingly popular among the young. That's giving traditional online dating sites a run for their money, said John Tinker, research analyst at ThinkEquity Partners. The Big 3 online dating sites — Yahoo! Personals, Match.com and EHarmony.com will have to tweak their business models and create new innovative products to grow revenue. One place to look is advertising. Date.com's CEO Meir Strahlberg said that advertising revenues have doubled in the past few months to 10% of total revenue. "There are 86 million single adults who control annual spending of $1.6 trillion," Strahlberg said. "Online dating sites reach about 30 percent of that market currently." Date.com can target an advertiser's products to almost any demographic based on user profiles. Yahoo! Personals general manager Lorna Borenstein said, "today's online daters are increasingly sophisticated. You can't just increase offerings; you have to help singles figure out their relationship goals and offer tools to help them find their version of success, whatever that might be." FULL ARTICLE @ CNN MONEY
Mark Brooks: Hot future trends; 1. targeted advertising on online dating sites. 2. personality profiling.
I see personality profiling bashed to various degress in certain circles, but I couldn’t agree with you more, Mark — personality profiling is and will continue to be hot. In fact, profiling and marketing go hand-in-hand if done scientifically. However, sites known historically for mere “online dating” arguably will be the ones to profit least from this trend for testing.
Rather, I see sites with resources that speak to a wide range of relationship goals being the testing winners in the long run, as these are the sites that can transcend online dating to be “lifestyle” sites.
Various testing products can then be used to address the many facets of relationship development and maintenance. In the article, Lorna Borenstein spoke perfectly to this idea — an idea that TRUE, for one, has already put into practice.
Thanks,
James Houran, Ph.D.
Chief Psychologist, TRUE.com
1. I sent thousands of signups to true.com via search engines. People at true were complaining that they couldn’t get more then 10% on average to take the compatability test. I also doubt the “scientific” porn ads true.com is running is enticing people to take the test either.
2. Targetted advertising is hard, its hard to sell out your inventory and most sites never do. Dating sites have a high pageview to user ratio, that leads to really low CPM’s and poor performance. Competitors can advertise down stream and get your users, users have already paid for a subscription and don’t want to see advertising. They may go to another site that is cleaner and less full of advertising.
A duality will appear
non-serious dating sites: EXCLUSIVE CONTENTS
serious dating sites: QUALITY CONTACTS
serious dating sites == like actual off-line chains (confidential treatment of information provided, code of ethics and background checks)
Kindest Regards,
Fernando Ardenghi.
Buenos Aires.
Argentina.
ardenghifer@gmail.com
Quite humorous yet off the mark commentary, Markus.
Compatibility tests per se don’t appeal to everyone — they also require targeted marketing of sorts. Also, I’ve never heard anyone complain that only 10% of the people you (or anyone else) may have sent completed the TRUE Compatibility Test/TCT (and I’ve been quite in the know since the company started). The reasons why the TCT is so successful and popular include the fact that it’s a legitimate scientific instrument that has been independently audited by a tests and measurement expert, the research behind the TCT has been published in the academic literature, and the test and the entire True.com site is endorsed by Psychology Today. No other service can make those claims. Without divulging proprietary info on the test, let’s just say that TRUE has reason to be quite happy with the TCT and its position in the industry.
As for targeted marketing being hard — yes, it is, unless you do it correctly. The key is to use proper assessment techniques, and this is something hardly anyone does (including marketing firms).
People basically use (when they use anything) persona/composite based methods because no one seems to have been able to produce the type of online personalization promised years ago. Targeted marketing could jump light years ahead if commercially available “psychographic” data and like methods were exchanged for methods like Computerized Adaptive Testing and Item Response Theory that are seamlessly integrated in the site/user experience.
Thanks,
James Houran, Ph.D.
Chief Psychologist, TRUE.com
Yes i thought you’d like the porn comment 🙂 True.com was dropping affiliates where 5% of signups or less weren’t taking the test. I had to disable some of my search engine ads, because not even preselling the comptability test was enough to get people to take it.
I think your off about targetted marketing. Most online marketing is direct marketing, either your ad works or it doesn’t. psychographic would seem useless. What really matters is how a advertiser converts a lead into a sale and depends mostly on the layout and design of their site. Knowing that user abc is more prone to buying a product on site A does not mean they would be willing to do so on site B.
Anyone know what Date.com is doing in revenues these days? 10% of revenues from advertising is pretty impressive as they don’t see to go too crazy with ads.