by Zoe Kleinman
See full article at BBC
Month: November 2017
MissTravel Sends Singles On Romantic Holidays With Complete Strangers
THESUN.CO.UK – Nov 11 – MissTravel lets singles search for a partner based on their looks, interests and holiday preferences. Both male and female members can create trip requests, by filling out a basic outline of where they plan to go, what they plan to do, and how long they plan to be away. It was founded by Brandon Wade, who also runs the sugar daddy dating site seekingarrangement.com. People suggesting trips can choose from three payment options, "pay for me," "I'll pay for you," and "Let's split 50:50." Several women have publicly admitted that they use the site to travel the world and stay in expensive hotels – leaving the bill to rich men. The website now has ~800k members worldwide.
What Online Dating Profiles Say About Our View Of Aging
RichMeetBeautiful Hopes To Recruit 100k ‘Sugar Babies’ From UK Universities
by George Sandeman
See full article at TheSun.co.uk
The Co-Founder Of Gaydar Has Died Aged 51
BUZZFEED – Nov 12 – Henry Badenhorst, the co-founder of Gaydar dating website, has died after falling from a tower block in South Africa. It is understood he killed himself. Along with Gary Frisch, his business and romantic partner, Badenhorst founded Gaydar in Nov 1999. Frisch died in 2007 – he also fell to his death from the balcony of a building. Badenhorst described the loss of Frisch as the worst day of his life and according to friends he never fully recovered from it. The couple dreamed up the website after a single gay friend of theirs had been complaining about how hard it was to find a boyfriend on existing online dating sites. At the peak of Gaydar's success, it had ~5M subscribers.
Creative Review: How Hot Are Ads For Online Dating?
AD NEWS – Nov 3 – Creatives from Marcel, Loud and VCCP weighed in on ads from Tinder, Elite Singles, eHarmony, Bumble and RSVP.
eHarmony
Seems like a safe bet for those who take dating and relationships seriously.
eHarmony understands that there's a moment when something just clicks but could have gone down a much richer creative path.
Tinder
It's great that Tinder are self-aware and don't take themselves too seriously. As for the idea, it's ok but we've seen this sort of set up before.
Tinder, Apple TV
The writing's great. Characters are funny. Very watchable. Feels like a sitcom. And strategically it works hard. This definitely gets a swipe to the right.
RSVP
Hats off to The Core Agency and RSVP team for sticking with a great line, 'Find a keeper', and building on a really strong platform.
Elite Singles
For all its obvious flaws, this ad makes up for it in spades when it comes to appealing to a particular audience. It knows who it wants to target and is not shy about it. However, there's a big difference in appealing to your audience, and understanding them.
Bumble
Bumble is the cool kid. The fact that there is only one ad in the series that features a guy, and that he doesn't utter a word, is a teeny bit unnerving though. It totally appeals to the confident millennial females out there.
NOAH 17 – Interview With Geoff Cook, CEO Of The Meet Group; Tim Schiffers, CEO Of Parship; Jeronimo Folgueira, CEO Of EliteSingles
NOAH CONFERENCE – Nov 10 – CEOs of Parship, EliteSingles and The Meet Group were interviewed at the “Future of online dating” panel during the NOAH17 conference in London. They spoke about the past, present and future of online dating.
Parship – two brands – Parship & ElitePartner that operate in the matchmaking segment, €120M annual revenue (mobile revenue €35M), ~50% of registrations are via mobile, 100k babies
EliteSingles – renamed to Spark Networks, predicted 2018 revenue $122M, EBITDA $22M, 500K paying members
The Meet Group – 15M monthly active users, 4.5M daily active users (DAU), 190K new members every day, acquired Lovoo and Tagged; focus on live video streaming, 20% of DAU use live streaming every day.
Q: Are people on your platform looking for a relationship?
Geoff: Half of Meetme users would say dating, half would say friendship. On Lovoo, ¼ of users say they are looking for entertainment.
Tim: Serious relationship, people go through our questionnaire that takes 30-40 minutes.
Jeronimo: We have very similar product as Parship, our questionnaire also takes 30-40 minutes.
Q: What’s your view on Bumble?
Geoff: It is a great success story. Tinder introduced double swipe to unlock the chat, Bumble amped it up with the female initiating the conversation after double swipe.
Tim: It helps them a lot to be part of Badoo.
Q: How much do you spend on TV ads?
Jeronimo: It is a double-digit million number. 2/3 of our marketing budget goes into offline media, 1/3 goes to online&digital.
Geoff: 70% of our revenue comes from advertising today, that was 85% before Lovoo. We believe live streaming is going to change that. People can send gifts to the streamers. The gifts could be purchased with our virtual currency.
Q: Do you see the younger demographic declining on your platforms because they don’t watch TV with ads?
Tim: No, we have actually seen the biggest influx in the younger demographic (25+)
Jeronimo: We are shifting our advertising from TV to online. We are shifting to where our audience is. So I don’t think shifting away from TV will impact our business.
Q: How global is your business?
Geoff: 80% is international.
Jeronimo: Half North America, half the rest of the world, mostly Europe.
Tim: We are mostly focused on the German-speaking market and we are very comfortable.
Q: What is going to happen in 5 years?
Tim: We will continue with consolidation.
Geoff: I think if you stand still, you’ll die. The competition is big.
See all posts on The Meet Group
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The Meet Group Q3 Financial Results
BUSINESSWIRE – Nov 9 – Total Q3 revenue is $32.2M, up 88% YOY; mobile revenue – $23.7M, up 47% YOY. Net income – $2.2M. David Clark, current CFO will be leaving the company at the end of this year. Jim Bugden, current Sr. Vice President, Corporate Development, has been appointed Interim CFO, effective Nov 13, and a search for a permanent CFO is underway and will be led by James & Co.
See full article at The Meet Group website
Tinder Promises New Features
THE VERGE – Nov 9 – Tinder is getting new features that will "blur lines between the physical and digital world for dating." Greg Blatt, the CEO of Tinder's parent company, Match, says the new features will make the app less boring. Match posted its Q3 earnings yesterday, noting that overall revenue of $343M was up 19% YOY. Blatt attributed the higher numbers to the success of Tinder Gold, and hinted at new features expected to hit Tinder in a few weeks, including AI and location-based functions. Tinder has also gained 476K paying subscribers in this quarter. "Until now, Tinder has basically been a swiping machine," said Blatt during the call. "It's effective and simple but ultimately limited." He outlined a plan to change the whole Tinder experience after a match is made. Even less detail was given about Tinder's future AI features, except that they will be consumer-facing and reliant on user data to personalize app experiences.
Chinese Wives Expect To Be Given An Apartment
GLOBAL TIMES – Nov 9 – A new survey by matchmaking website Zhenai.com revealed that over half of all single Chinese people born after the 1990s agree with premarital cohabitation. It also found that most single Chinese women expect their future partner's monthly salary to exceed 8,000 yuan ($1205.21), rising 3,000 yuan from last year. Most women born after 1990s expect to have their own apartment as a precondition for marriage. 80% of men and women surveyed are not in favor of "going Dutch" on dates, 69 % of men and women feel that men should pay for most dates and 12% believe all dates should be paid entirely by men.