As the peak internet dating season approaches, Plentyoffish continues to trounce the free dating site competition. In the international arena, 7.2 million people in the UK visited the worlds largest free dating site in October, as opposed to 4.3 million and 2.1 million for Meetic and Match, respectively.
The press release I received states that a the main difference in how Plentyoffish markets itself is word-of-mouth marketing rather than heavy online ad spending. I find this statement difficult to swallow. I’ve heard from various industry sources that PoF spends quite a bit on online advertising. Do you really think people are talking about PoF enough to drive seven million monthly visitors in the UK?
PlentyofFish is about traffic. Buying traffic and making money of advertising revenue and affiliate marketing. If it sells, the acquiring company is most likely interested in the traffic and the eyeballs more than the fact that the majority of the audience are casual daters.
I keep receiving my weekly “new people on PoF” emails and try as I might, when I compare the quality of the people with Match, PoF doesn’t come close. That is not a dig towards the people on PoF, it’s my personal observation after belonging to hundreds of dating sites over the past 5 years.
Marketers salivate over PoF traffic, that’s a lot of inventory to sell advertising. Let’s take a look who’s on the site today.
Naughty-or-Nice.com. right on the home page when you are not logged in. This is a classic bait-and-switch. Initial ad looks like a True.com rip-off, clicking through you arrive at a site which is one page, a signup form asking you to create a login and showing how many singles match your criteria. Submitting the form redirects you to True.com and complains about my password. This kind of marketing pisses me off to no end. The one truth about True is that it continues to be disrespectful of potential and existing members. Enough about them, I could rant about True for hours, a rich vein of discontent in the online dating industry to say the least.
Reloading home page, we are greeted with an American Singles ad. The same American Singles that has been hemorrhaging users for years not as Spark Networks focuses marketing spend on more lucrative sites like JDate.
Next ad, after logging in, is K&N automotive filters (which I use and do get an extra 5 horsepower with). Just how targeted is this ad? Do women see it?
Google ads at top of page look like this:
Free dating sites chat rooms and affaire sites. Yuk.
Reloading page, it’s an ad for eHarmony. As I’ve said for ages, PoF reels people in, then sends them on their way to other sites, picking up anywhere from a few pennies to $50 every time someone exits the site via advertising. Nothing wrong with that at all. It’s the misperception
Next up, an ad for Microsoft Office. Yeah, I want to go read about Excel when I’m on a dating site.
Ok, you get the picture?
I’m the first to admit that these days I am totally biased towards larger sites like Match. Show me a site with a better variety of members from all walks of life, who are serious about finding someone, that’s as easy to use, has better profiles and search, and I’ll sign up today.
I’m in a major city, a serious online dater, and admittedly difficult to please when it comes to the type of women I find appealing. Larger sites seem to work better for me. If I was in my mid-twenties and into indie rock, there are many niche sites I could join, but at 39 I find the whole niche dating experience less than satisfactory. Believe me, if I found a niche that worked, I would work it and be writing about it.
