Comments on: Social Network Dating Ad Ban Is Affecting Online Dating Industry

By: David Evans

David Evans — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 17:07:17 +0000

There are many moving parts when it comes to measuring traffic. First off, all traffic stats are wrong and should not be trusted. However, the general trends, if correlated between several monitoring services, can generally be used as a guide.

Nobody knows if the recession is driving people to online dating. I have not seen one single reliable source that states this is a fact.

I’ve said many times over that ad spend has a lot to do with traffic. If a company spends 2X more during the online dating busy season, of course their traffic is going to go up.

By: Gaurav Barot

Gaurav Barot — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 06:04:23 +0000

If you look at the Compete figures, the giant among the dating site, Match, has registered a fall of (approx.) 2 millions in months of February 2009 compared to February 2008. It you keep aside the months of June and July (2008), the traffic remained at a low all the months and dipping further.

The recession is truly making its presence felt. Or, is there something more to this than meet the eye, David?

By: mauricev

mauricev — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 12:56:35 +0000

I’ve always been skeptical of the accuracy of these rankings. For example, I compared unique visitors, monthly for AmericanSingles at 336,018 and JDate at 182,596.

But their own websites refute this! AS has 3139 members online whereas JDate has 9389. That’s 3 to 1 in the other direction and sometimes the ratio is higher.

Something’s fishy about that, no?

By: casualencounters.com/blog/

casualencounters.com/blog/ — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 21:59:12 +0000

My previous comment didn't make it. I am still seeing mate1.com and russian bride ads. Screenshot here (some ads removed): SCREENSHOT

By: David Evans

David Evans — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 15:19:04 +0000

The larger story here is the reliance on cheap social networking ad traffic to drive growth. Social network dating traffic is mostly casual daters, not serious. These people might sign up, but they tend to bounce off the site quickly.

What do dating sites have to say about chargeback rates for social network traffic? Higher or lower than targeted traffic? What about length of stay?

The dating site ad ban was very specific, it’s not an across-the-board issue.

Large dating sites are forced to rely on enormous ad spend to stay competitive, this is not going to change for quite some time.

I’m not seeing dating ads of Facebook today, but that could be anomaly.

Obviously ad spend is down, but if you look year to year some of the larger sites are down by several million visitors a month.

Anyone can have a few million profiles if they spend their ad budget wisely.

I predict a downturn.
P.S. – Sorry, forgot to tell you great post!

By: David Evans

David Evans — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 15:01:19 +0000

What do dating sites have to say about chargeback rates for social network traffic? Higher or lower than targeted traffic? What about length of stay?

The dating site ad ban was very specific, it’s not an across-the-board issue.

Large dating sites are forced to rely on enormous ad spend to stay competitive, this is not going to change for quite some time.

I’m not seeing dating ads of Facebook today, but that could be anomaly.

Obviously ad spend is down, but if you look year to year some of the larger sites are down by several million visitors a month.

Anyone can have a few million profiles if they spend their ad budget wisely.

I predict a downturn.

By: Mark Brooks

Mark Brooks — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 11:42:46 +0000

The dating industry is always down after Valentines. What do their year over year numbers look like. Hitwise, comScore and Nielson number are out soon so it will be interesting to look over and report on the post Valentines numbers to see if the industryis up, or has finally succumb to the same economic woes as most other industries.

By: casualencounters.com/blog/

casualencounters.com/blog/ — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 21:43:40 +0000

I still see dating ads on Facebook, what’s the deal there?