BUSINESS 2.0 MAGAZINE — Mar 30 – Andrew Conru, a mechanical engineering Stanford PhD, started the first online dating site, WebPersonals, in the early '90s, sold it in 1995, [started again in 1996] and now owns 27 sites under Various Inc. which control twice as much online dating traffic as Match.com. AdultFriendFinder accounts for 60% of the revenue. Conru's privately held, 450-person company brings in well over $200 million in annual revenue, and averaged 40% annual growth for the past nine years. With more than 35 million visitors in 2006 and 75,000 new users registering each day, AFF ranks among the 100 most popular sites in the U.S.A. It's become so mainstream that a joke about it appeared in the Diane Keaton and Mandy Moore romantic comedy, Because I Said So. "In Hugh Hefner's day, it was 'It's OK to look at sexuality,'" Conru says. "Now it's OK to be sexual." The average AFF user pays $20 a month; others shell out as much as $50. "The more niche you get, the more value per member," Conru explains. To expand without investment capital, Conru invented a massive affiliate program, in effect outsourcing his marketing to the public. Various now has more than 500,000 affiliates. This year his goal is to buy six businesses. So far he's done well with the three purchases he's made (Gradfinder.com, Bondage.com, and FastCupid.com). FULL ARTICLE @ CNN
Mark Brooks: Here's the Quantcast numbers for the top adult dating sites…
AdultFriendFinder – 9.6m uniques/month
SexSearch – 3.3m uniques/month
Mate1 – 2.5 million uniques/month
I worked for Andrew in 2003 and remember Andrew walking into the marketing office one day and declaring part serious, part in jest, 'who can I fire today.' He was on his third marketing team in two years. Six months later one third had quit and the other third had been canned.
KATHRYN'S BLOG — Apr 4 — Spending on advertising for online dating services has risen dramatically since 2004. Nielsen Monitor-Plus advertising intelligence service said that while total media spend for such efforts was $149 million in the U.S. in 2004, it rose to $310 million the following year, and hit $430 million from January to November of 2006. Cable TV led the pack with $130.6 million in reported ad spending last year. The Internet was a close second at $127.3 million, and spot TV ads were third with $75.1 million spent. eHarmony.com spent $110 million, Match.com spent $66 million and Teligence (parent company of Live Links, Tango, Redhot, Vibeline and Fonchat) spent nearly $43 million.
