How come dating sites aren’t targeting their ads better? Do you see ads for local restaurants or fun date ideas on dating sites? I don’t. How difficult is it to embed geo-targeted ads for restaurants in a web page? This was figured out almost a decade ago. Why aren’t these ads embedded in the email interface when you are composing an email to someone?
Why don’t dating sites partner with Groupon? I’m taking a two-hour helicopter flying lesson for $60 bucks that I found on the site. I would like to put that on my profile and see if someone wants that to be our first date? They click the link, everyone makes some money and we have a memorable first date. Tempting death in a whirly-bird may be an extreme example, my point is that there are many creative marketing ideas to drive additional revenue that dating sites should be taking advantage of.
I’ve been telling virtual dating companies for years to give it away and that product placement in virtual dating environments is where the money is. The online gaming world makes millions this way.
Farmville gets it.
BBR Saatchi & Saatchi Tel Aviv and Saatchi Interactive will launch the first “commercially inspired crop” on Farmville. “The initiative will see Zynga, creators of FarmVille, introduce a new crop – peanuts – as part of Saatchi Tel Aviv’s roll-out campaign for Elite Taami Nutz, a new peanut-filled variant of one of Israel’s favourite chocolate snacks. The ‘peanuts’ will be available on FarmVille from the 14th April 2010.”
First its a peanut, then it’s Monsanto Franken-seeds, then it’s all sorts of Home Depot-branded stuff and they are off to the races. Kidding about Monsanto, they are pure evil.
What about drinking a virtual Coors online? What about having VIP virtual dates, with a pre-date coaching session and the ability to customize your environment in a freemium model upgrade?
At the least, dating sites should make it easy for me to recommend date ideas. In a sense, that’s what HowAboutWe does.
