The JDate ad, a 30-second animated spot, runs once an hour for 18 hours a day on the JumboTron screen above ABC’s “Good Morning America” window at 44th Street and Broadway in Times Square. The current initiative–which will run through early December, then again from Dec. 20 until Feb. 11–is the first traditional ad campaign for the site, said company spokesman Jonathan Cutler. JDate is also running a print campaign in New York magazine. The campaign, produced in conjunction with Outdoor Television Network and Blink Multimedia, will run only in New York City, where JDate has “a significant member base,” said Cutler. MatchNet’s move came just two days after Yahoo! debuted its own upgraded personals service, “Personals Premier.”
MatchNet’s American Singles is the third most popular online dating service, with 6.21 percent of the market, behind Yahoo! Personals, which has 20.94 percent of the market and Match.com, with 7.26 percent, according to research firm Hitwise. MatchNet’s JDate was the 20th most popular dating service, according to Hitwise.
