WLD — July 9 — WhiteLabelDating.com partners with Cosmopolitan Magazine. Cosmopolitan, targeted at females aged 24 – 34, will be advertising the launch of their new service in this month’s publication as well as a prime-position banner on the homepage of their website.
Borders.co.uk, Guardian, now Cosmo – soon every magazine or retailer is going to have its own dating service. Add to this several new dating sites that are launching every day. In which direction is this industry going? And how all these websites are going to make money?
Borders.co.uk, Guardian, now Cosmo – soon every magazine or retailer is going to have its own dating service. Add to this several new dating sites that are launching every day. In which direction is this industry going? And how all these websites are going to make money?
Mac
Media brands are well placed to run their own highly successful branded dating sites.
1. They have an existing and loyal audience to market too
2. This audience has high levels of brand trust in the media property
3. They visit the main media owner website regularly (often daily)
Therefore if the demographic profile is right you have a ready made loyal audience that you leverage via the existing trusted media brand, with minimal effort versus a standalone dating brand. What’s not to like!
Other advantages that media owners can benefit from include
1. Access to user data – enables audience profiling and insight and (where permissions have been given) cross promotion and marketing of other media owner services to the dating audience (enhancing revenues further)
2. Additional revenue stream from selling dating site ad inventory
3. User traffic can be counted against their main sites audience traffic – dating sites are very good at driving up traffic numbers.
There are numerous highly successful media owner branded dating services that are highly profitable and growing far in excess of the market y/y.
Given the above advantages expect to see more media owners launching their own branded dating service in the future
Matthew
Matthew Pitt, Managing Director, The Dating Lab
http://www.thedatinglab.com
Mac
Media brands are well placed to run their own highly successful branded dating sites.
1. They have an existing and loyal audience to market too
2. This audience has high levels of brand trust in the media property
3. They visit the main media owner website regularly (often daily)
Therefore if the demographic profile is right you have a ready made loyal audience that you leverage via the existing trusted media brand, with minimal effort versus a standalone dating brand. What’s not to like!
Other advantages that media owners can benefit from include
1. Access to user data – enables audience profiling and insight and (where permissions have been given) cross promotion and marketing of other media owner services to the dating audience (enhancing revenues further)
2. Additional revenue stream from selling dating site ad inventory
3. User traffic can be counted against their main sites audience traffic – dating sites are very good at driving up traffic numbers.
There are numerous highly successful media owner branded dating services that are highly profitable and growing far in excess of the market y/y.
Given the above advantages expect to see more media owners launching their own branded dating service in the future
Matthew
Matthew Pitt, Managing Director, The Dating Lab
http://www.thedatinglab.com
This is exactly what SpringStreet Networks did eight years ago. It’s a good solution for brands which don’t want to deal with software and the associated hassles, instead limiting their efforts to general marketing and banner ads on their own networks.
WLD needs to pay particular attention to advertising on dating site pages, that was a sticky situation for SpringStreet.
If WLD can effectively deal with profile ownership issues they could take off in the US. I’m still not clear on what happens to shared profiles, even though Ross Williams has addressed here and on my blog several times. I get calls about this all the time, so it’s not just me.
This is exactly what SpringStreet Networks did eight years ago. It’s a good solution for brands which don’t want to deal with software and the associated hassles, instead limiting their efforts to general marketing and banner ads on their own networks.
WLD needs to pay particular attention to advertising on dating site pages, that was a sticky situation for SpringStreet.
If WLD can effectively deal with profile ownership issues they could take off in the US. I’m still not clear on what happens to shared profiles, even though Ross Williams has addressed here and on my blog several times. I get calls about this all the time, so it’s not just me.
Thanks for reply. You have impressive clientele. Do your customers usually go for a paid membership model?
Thanks for reply. You have impressive clientele. Do your customers usually go for a paid membership model?
Hi Mac and David
Mac: Yes our customers and our business model is based upon paid for subscriptions. Our media partners have a loyal audience base and the people who are attracted to our partner sites are serious about dating and therefore willing to pay to meet a community of likeminded members. As a general rule, free dating sites equate to six times the size but one sixth of the revenue of paid for dating sites. Therefore I’m very happy to remain with the paid for model! Plus the benefits to media owners are not merely revenue based (see my earlier comments above).
Dave: Advertising on our media owner dating sites is very straightforward. The clients sales team are responsible for selling the advertising and as a Forrester report stated people who are on dating sites are looking to make changes in their lives and are therefore receptive to advertising – ‘Why Marketeers Should Court Online Dating – June 2007’.
Re profile ownership: Media owners own the data for the profiles of people that sign up to their sites. Pooling or sharing of user profiles only makes sense when you have similar likeminded individuals from different (non-competing) media brands or similar brands with in the same media group – but whilst the profiles are shared the data is not. A single ‘one size fits all pot’ is not the way to go for the media owner or the user alike.
Hi Mac and David
Mac: Yes our customers and our business model is based upon paid for subscriptions. Our media partners have a loyal audience base and the people who are attracted to our partner sites are serious about dating and therefore willing to pay to meet a community of likeminded members. As a general rule, free dating sites equate to six times the size but one sixth of the revenue of paid for dating sites. Therefore I’m very happy to remain with the paid for model! Plus the benefits to media owners are not merely revenue based (see my earlier comments above).
Dave: Advertising on our media owner dating sites is very straightforward. The clients sales team are responsible for selling the advertising and as a Forrester report stated people who are on dating sites are looking to make changes in their lives and are therefore receptive to advertising – ‘Why Marketeers Should Court Online Dating – June 2007’.
Re profile ownership: Media owners own the data for the profiles of people that sign up to their sites. Pooling or sharing of user profiles only makes sense when you have similar likeminded individuals from different (non-competing) media brands or similar brands with in the same media group – but whilst the profiles are shared the data is not. A single ‘one size fits all pot’ is not the way to go for the media owner or the user alike.