Online Dating Insider » Marketing

PlentyofFish has Plenty of Advertising Space

David Evans — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 18:07:30 +0000

Ads.pof.com now has more inventory available that will be sold as IAB standard ad sizes. When creating a new campaign, this feature will be available to users who have deposited more than $1000 into their account with ads.pof.com.

35 million impressions per day are available for these ad sizes. These ads will be displayed on Plentyoffish.com Profile Pages (300×250) Online My City pages (160×600) and View Message pages (120×600).

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Viral Marketing on Facebook Isn’t Dead Yet

David Evans — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 13:32:39 +0000

Many developers were more than concerned about Facebook phasing out application-based Notifications on March 1st. Companies are instead focusing on creative ways to increase user engagement, including asking for virtual gifts, wall messaging and fan page posts. More at Inside Social Games.

It’s great to see dating sites beginning to take cues from social games, where there is much to be learned about increasing user engagement metrics.

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Tasty Takeover Advertising

David Evans — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 22:07:58 +0000

Most people would agree that online dating advertising leaves a lot to be desired. Except for a few instances like Match and even eHarmony’s latest ads, 18 year-olds co-ed boobs is about as creative as the industry gets. I uploaded some of the first paid banner ads ever and worked for the ad agency that was responsible for Microsoft’s online advertising back in the day so I know a few things about advertising, and what I see is nowhere near living up to expectations.

For those dating sites stuck in the stock-photo boobs rut, I wanted to give you some inspiration so you would perhaps stop embarrassing all of us. I present exhibit A: “And Then There Was Salsa”. This is a fanstic example of what can be done with a page takeover. Basing the ad on video makes it even more impressive. Here’s a great NYT Apple ad as well.

Dating sites can attract a lot more people if they would treat members like humans and not sex-crazed hedonists.

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Sex.com For Sale

David Evans — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 15:02:24 +0000

Domain sellers contact me every so often about selling their domain portfolios to dating sites. After having these conversation for a number of years, I completely understand the frustration domainers feel when they get the cold shoulder from dating sites uninterested in what the domainer considers a great deal.

According to Elliot’s Blog, the sex.com domain is up for auction. No shortage of interest in this case, thats for sure.

The tale of Sex.com is actually very interesting, and a book was written about it a few years ago. The Cliff’s Notes version is that Match.com founder Gary Kremen originally registered the domain name, but it was then stolen by Stephen Cohen, and a 10 year legal battle ensued. A company called ESCOM, LLC acquired Sex.com in January of 2006, although terms of the deal were not disclosed. There was an article that pegged the sale at $14 million, but there was no confirmation that this number is accurate.

I’m working with a company right now that has a great domain like sex.com. Their website isn’t much to look at but the domain is so good they can’t help but make a nice living without too much effort.

These are the clients I love to work with- startups with a leg up on the competition and companies who’s task is to go from single to double-digit millions. I talk to many, many startups that have great ideas (usually features), but the spread from idea to sustainable ongoing business, especially in the online dating industry, is too wide a gap for 99% of new dating startups.

That’s whats great about my job, I get to talk to passionate entrepreneurs and innovators each and every day. Most of them will fail, and the smart ones know this, but they go ahead anyway and give it their best shot. There is a big difference between an entrepreneur and an opportunist. The latter don’t stick around as long and their short-sighed/myopic vision usually has them off in the weeds in no time at all. The reality is that there are plenty of both types in the online dating space. If you’re the former, let’s talk.

Did you know that Porn.com went for $9.5m? Leave a comment with the price you think sex.com will sell for.

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At OKCupid, Openness is The Key to Success

David Evans — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 16:21:15 +0000

Great article about OKCupid in the New York Times, Looking for a Date? A Site Suggests You Check the Data.

In its fight against much bigger competitors like Match.com, PlentyOfFish and eHarmony, it has tried a number of marketing techniques, often with little success. But the blog, which OkCupid started in October, has helped get the company’s name out on other blogs and social networks. A post last month that set out to debunk conventional wisdom about profile pictures brought more than 750,000 visitors to the site and garnered 10,000 new member sign-ups, according to the company.

The research obviously took a lot of time and resources, but If this doesn’t once and for all show the dating industry that there is a huge upside to being more open and informative while helping members make the most out of the online dating experience, I don’t know what will. 750,000 visitors based on a blog post!

These days I am inundated with dating site social media spam clogging up Twitter with cloaked affiliate links and T&A photo enticements. This sort of lowest-common-denominator marketing will continue because it’s cheap traffic, but I like to think that sites taking more focused on branding and efficiently are the ones who will grow the most and succeed in the long run.

Someone should do a comparison between social media traffic results and generic dating site marketing like Adwords. It would be fascinating to see comparisons between cost and effectiveness.

The OKCupid article went viral primarily because it’s something people had never read about before. It was re-tweeted many times, and media attention begets more media attention. It wasn’t 101-level dating advice like “brush your teeth before a date” like so many dating site magazines publish (with a few exceptions, which I will be talking about in coming weeks.) The tone of the blog post was not that of an academic paper, which would never have gotten the same level of exposure.

Greg Waldorf, chief executive of eHarmony, which says it has more than 20 million registered users, was dismissive of the marketing power of OkCupid’s blog reports.

Of course he was. Waldorf’s quote is garden variety CEO-speak. I understand media quotes that position a brand against competitors, but that level of snarkiness in unnecessary. eHarmony clearly doesn’t understand the importance of great profile photos, which is inexplicable.

And what’s with the 20 million registered users comment? There are lawsuits brewing over statements like that. Shame on eHarmony and Match for using these irrelevant numbers in the media. They are both going to get spanked over these statements, just you wait and see. Monthly logins is a number I’d like to see used instead.

Eharmony doesn’t have to be concerned about OKCupid, but to be dismissive of the research is an indicator of just how out of touch eHarmony has become. The trend is toward openness and empowering singles, and that’s the polar opposite of how eHarmony works.

EHarmony doesn’t share anything. They are like the North Korea of the online dating industry. A big black box and a giant marketing machine. They have their top-5 position in the marketplace and will be there for many, many years to come. It’s imperative to understand how brilliantly eHarmony built the company, from the $100 million dollar early fundraising, to the commercials, and the fact that eHarmony is perfect for busy and lazy people who don’t feel like spending five hours a week on Match and need a lot of handholding.

Eharmony’s empire is built on a matching system that nobody really understands outside of the company. It’s probably the best black-box compatibility system available and there is nothing any competitors can do about it. Except Chemistry, which is spending tens of millions of dollars to take the edgy/urban/alternative people away from eHarmony, with varying degrees of success.

I wish someone could compare eHarmony to Chemistry.com and Perfectmatch. In the meantime, the Catalyst Group in New York has done an exhaustive comparison of Match and eHarmony, A Usability Study of Online Dating is the best review of two dating sites I’ve ever seen. Every dating industry executive should read the entire report.

Read a Usability Study of Online Dating

While I’m at it, I would also like to see IAC break out Match and Chemistry financials and to report each PeopleMedia property on it’s own. Hey, we can dream.

PlentyOfFish thinks I’ve got a crush on OKCupid, and it’s true. I will not hide the fact that I believe that OKCupid is hands-down the best introduction site for urban, sex-positive, educated, liberated and worldly singles. No other site even comes close.

In fact, I unsubscribed from PlentyOfFish today. Longtime readers know that I subscribe and unsubscribe from dating sites all the time, and this time it’s POF. I’ve been on numerous great OKCupid dates recently and for me, personally, POF just isn’t delivering. And it’s not like PlentyOfFish is going to change anytime soon, at least from the member perspective. So I’m out, at least for a while. I’m going to replace POF with Match.

Maybe I’ll re-join eHarmony, but I’ve been on that ride before, not expecting a different experience, but it’s good to go through the signup process every once in a while to see what’s changed.

Note: not belonging to a dating site doesn’t mean I ignore it. I have logins all over the place, and my favorite market research has always been pulling out the laptop with friends and having them log into their favorite sites and search and emailing people together.

One final bit about PlentyofFish before I sign off. I’m sure that people in the dating industry have discussed these topics ad nausea, but I ran into POF execs at iDate and wanted to clarify my thoughts.

For a handful of people up in Canada running an international site nearing 100 million monthly logins, their stratospheric grow is unprecedented and worthy of a business school case study someday.

As a business, POF is trying to break through to the next level. The company is doing everything it can to monetize the stupefying number of logins it receives each month. Word on the street is that in Canada POF is landing higher-class advertisers, which I don’t see when I log in here in Boston. Anything they can do to lessen the number of slutty ads will be a bonus for all users and raise revenue accordingly.

Problem is, the company is too small, not to mention the fact that reliance on advertising is never going to get them to that magical $30-$50 million in revenue. What was once a bragging right has become a hindrance. To begin with, they need to broaden the team. Five people can’t possibly build out the strategy and execution plan that gets a free dating site from $15 million to $30 million. Not being critical of management, just realistic of the efforts involved and how revenue growth tends to swell the ranks.

While I’m certainly an avid OKCupid fan, PlentyofFish has a much larger opportunity to grow, especially internationally. Markus and the team need to focus on evolving the definition of the company from “we’re popular” to “we’re successful,” and that is no small feat.

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The Guardian Releases Dating Book and a Film

David Evans — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 15:52:11 +0000

Some interesting news regarding the Guardian newspaper’s Soulmates dating site. The online dating service, which runs on The Dating Lab platform, launched in 2004 to introduce likeminded readers of the Guardian to other likeminded readers. Just over five years later there are 145,000 active members of the site and the Guardian have just commissioned and published a book detailing some highly amusing stories from real life couples about their online dating experiences – not just on Soulmates but on other dating sites such as Match and Dating Direct.

The book is Soulmates. Also make sure to read Tales from the online-dating frontline and check out the comments. If that wasn’t enough, the Guardian took six couples from the book who met on Soulmates and made a series of short ‘how we met‘ films. The first one was released on Valentines day. Heartfelt, warm and fuzzy, I’m looking forward to watching the next one.

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Notes on Customer Acquisition and Viral Marketing From Andrew Chen

David Evans — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 17:13:22 +0000

Andrew Chen recently led a session on customer acquisition and viral marketing at the First Round Capital CEO Summit. Andrew is a go-to guy on this stuff, deep background and the kind of person I’d like to get into a conversation with about viral harmonics (and get totally schooled).

Zoosk and Are You Interested have been gathering viral marketing best practices for years, along with the social gaming crowd.

Your dating site’s $25 paying customer acquisition costs can be greatly reduced if you do viral marketing right. Problem is, it’s complicated and if your end product doesn’t resonate, you get traffic that bounces like a trampoline.

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PlentyofFish Demands Income Description

David Evans — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 00:32:45 +0000

Saw this while browsing PlentyofFish:

Please enter your income, we use it for matchmaking and it will never appear on your profile! You will not show up in the rows of images on top of pages, My Matches and many other sections of the site until you do.

This is also probably used for courting advertisers and targeting purposes. Nothing to keep people from selecting whatever they want, but a very direct way to force people to provide additional information about themselves.

Getting people to fill out their entire dating profile over time without bogging them down at the time of signup is something I’ve helped a lot of dating sites with. As with all new features, Always Be Testing.

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How to Loose Members Gracefully

David Evans — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 23:19:28 +0000

I subscribe and unsubscribe from websites all the time. Often it’s to see how a site lets me go. Many dating sites make the process unbearable, up to 10 screens of junk to go through. To me, thats being a sore loser, although the argument for this sort of behavior is quite clear, I say let them go, grab some parting information if possible and move on. I liked this RescueTime unsubscribe email so much I resubscribed.

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Gay Dating Site Commercial Banned From Superbowl

David Evans — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 22:59:54 +0000

This is a classic gorilla marketing tactic deserving a golf-clap. ManCrunch (related to sugar daddy site EstablishedMen), creates an ad that CBS will never approve. Planning on being rejected from the start, they send news to TMZ and enjoy the free publicity. Arguments about double standards (see GoDaddy ads), and appropriate content for super bowl ads ensue. Nicely played. ManCrunch can thank Godaddy banned Superbowl commercials for the inspiration.

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