GRUENDERSZENE – Oct 15 – AvidLife Media is launching CougarLife in Germany. CougarLife, a site for women 30+ looking for toy boys, started in 2009 in Canada, and claims $4.5M members worldwide. The women/men ratio is 52/48. CougarLife.de's competition in Germany is Zuckerjungs.de and Altersvorsprung.de.
Category: All UK & Europe
Affinitas Launches Prestige Singles
GRUENDERSZENE – Oct 10 – Affinitas, the company behind eDarling, is launching Prestige Singles, a new dating sites exclusively for academics.
Meetic Acquires e-kontakt In Sweden, Norway And Denmark
BUSINESS WIRE – Oct 2 – Meetic is going to acquire the assets of e-Kontakt, one of the leading Nordic dating site owned by Intodate International AB. The site launched in 2005. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
The full article was originally published at WSJ, but is no longer available.
This post also appears on InternetDatingInvestments.
Cupid Swings To First-half Loss
REUTERS – Sep 24 – Cupid PLC was hit by higher marketing and administrative costs. Adjusted pretax loss for the six months ended June 30 was £2.5M ($4M), from a profit of £3.5M a year earlier. Revenue rose 12.4% to £43.4M. Marketing spend increased 18% to £27.4M. Administrative expenses rose ~60% to £4M. Cupid said it expects continuing business to return to growth and profitability in 2014.
DoingSomething.co.uk Is Really Doing Something
ANINEWS – Sep 20 – DoingSomething.co.uk, a dating site based in London, has started organising sightseeing toilet tours with London Loo Tours. Participants are going to be led around Westminster on a bar crawl and will be required to periodically stop off at public toilets, where they are going to be given a brief history on the bathrooms and tips to find free ones in the area.
The full article was originally published at AniNews, but is no longer available.
Tinder Is Popular In London
STANDARD.CO.UK – Sep 20 – Tinder is the fastest-growing free dating app. The app is close to the original Facebook concept, Face Mash, where Harvard students were presented with two people and had to choose the most attractive. Its British audience is growing by 25% each week. London has the highest percentage of single people in the UK. Around half the population 20 – 59 years old are single.
The Top 20 Things I Learned At iDate Cologne
OPW – Sep 20 – iDate Cologne had 120 attendees and was informative and fun. Here are the top 20 things that I learned at the conference…or go here to see The Top 67 Things That I Learned at iDate Cologne.
Germany
- There are 8.4m online daters in D-A-CH (Germany, Austria and Switzerland)
- The German iDating market accounts for 20% of European Internet daters and 25% of European revenues
- 10 million German Internet daters generated 246m Euros revenue in 2012. Only the UK has similar numbers.
- 5 million German mobile daters generated 5-10m Euros in app revenues
Scandinavia
- The Scandinavian Internet dating market generates 60-80m Euros a year.
- Online dating adoption in Sweden is the highest in Europe at 50% of singles.
- There’s a high willingness to pay
- Motesplatsen is owned by a media company that is publicly traded and has 30 employees. 10m Euros revenues, and is subscription only.
Netherlands
- There’s 2.8m singles in Netherlands and 1.5m people use idating regularly.
- The Netherlands idating market is 30-35m Euros a year.
- There’s no big free dating site. No POF.
- Paiq.nl doesn’t pay for marketing. They have an interesting feature where users see blurred photos and have to text chat to unblur the photos. There’s no profiles, just a questionnaire, and no search function. ‘BattleDate’ is a fun game.
Poland
- There’s 38 million people in Poland, 25m internet users, and 10m Facebook users. 7m singles.
- Polish iDating annual revenues are ~15m Euros a year
Gamification in the Dating Industry
- The trick with gamification is to make what is boring and difficult into something fun and interesting.
European Casual Dating
- The proportion of people who have ever had sex with a stranger is rising rapidly in Germany and Switzerland.
- The more educated women are, the more sex they like to have.
Meetic
- Meetic is in 15 countries and has 4.7m uniques a month, Twoo has 5.1m monthly uniques.
- Meetic makes only 3.3% of its revenues from its mobile apps.
- Building a brand is your main priority! In the past Alistair Shrimpton ran Match and Dating Direct online advertising with exactly the same creative, in the same media, and the Match ads had 4 times the click-thru-rate of the Dating Direct ads.
Click here to see my full list, The Top 67 Things That I Learned at iDate Cologne, on the Courtland Brooks blog. – Mark Brooks
Quickie Interview: John And Marianna – 50 Plus Singles Dating In Europe
OPW INTERVIEW – Sep 19 – John Meuffels is CEO of MatchMedia.eu, and Marianna Exter is CEO of 50plus-treff.de.
I bumped into them at iDate Cologne just after they met each other. They had just discovered that they were competitors in the 50 plus
dating niche.
Quickie Interview: Phil Gripton, CEO Of Cupid.com
OPW INTERVIEW – Sep 19 – iDate Cologne was Phil’s first Internet Dating Conference.
Quickie Interview: Marc Lesnick, Host, iDate
OPW INTERVIEW – Sep 19 – Marc Lesnick was pleased with iDate Cologne. He was completely on form and did a stellar job running this Internet Dating Conference. This was the 35th iDate conference! Next up, Brazil in November, and then it’s Vegas Baby!, in January.