What a week. As memories of the iDate conference recede and the online dating busy season comes to a close, I find myself with new clients, nursing a hoarse voice from media calls all week and looking forward to some exciting new projects.
Besides a mention in the New York Times yesterday, I especially enjoyed working on this story addressing the relationship between the economic downturn and online dating. Much better quote than the Inc. mag article last month.
Matt Tatham at Hitwise.com tells the story of the data, but again, the weak argument that the economy is driving online dating growth:
Because of the economic downturn it only makes sense that there is an upsurge in free dating sites. People are less inclined to want to spend money for a pay-based site, and at the same time they may have more time on their hands if they’re working less.
When we look at the first six weeks of this year compared to last year, visits to the top 100 dating sites are up 2 percent.
Free sites, which make money from ads, were up 57 percent.
In case you were curious, I am not a firm believer that the economic downturn is the primary driver of the recent uptick in online dating. There is simply not enough evidence to support a serious correlation between the economy and dating. It’s simply the flavor of the month for reporters scratching their head about what to write this year during the Valentine’s Day run-up.
I see no mention of variances between past the current ad spend. Dating sites which ramp up ad spending during the holidays would most likely see an uptick in traffic.
What about an upswing in traffic based on new features and functionality deployed in 2008? Surely that would drive more visitors.
What other factors can you think of which might affect traffic to online dating sites?
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If other industries who were either buying CPM media ceased to do so, this would lead to higher supply of impressions and lower demand. Dating advertisers could pick up this inventory for cheap and may be doing so. As you pointed out, without showing ad spend, simply showing traffic numbers is only 1/2 of the equation.
Similarly, if these same industries were purchasing affiliate traffic and now ceased to do so, this would cause a void in affilaite offers. Some of these affilaites could be shifting their marketing efforts toward Online Dating.
In years past there was major online traffic flowing to morgage offers, debtc consolidation, and other Real Estate / Banking products. These have dried up while Online Dating is still alive and well.
Make sense?
Dating advertisers could pick up this inventory for cheap and may be doing so.