The latest Zoosk ads on Facebook are trying to use educating singles as a marketing hook. Very clever. Well actually common sense but this is a step in the right direction for Zoosk. Educating singles on how to make the most of their Zoosk membership is a good thing. I’d like to see a link to the research. Unless its OKCupid-style published, its just unsubstantiated hype from the bowels of the marketing department.
Someone please tell me the day Zoosk updates their three-year-old photo display system. Lightbox-style photo display is so 2007.
Poking around Zoosk some more, they are “expiring” matches. That probably drives a decent amount of traffic, but sounds a bit desperate, no?
I’d also like to hear more about the ZSMS (nice branding) matching system. I talked to the founders last week about other things, perhaps its time for another interview to get some perspective on the changes the site has undergone this year (and the things that remain the same that need to change.)
Its pretty funny that an executive from Zoosk’s competitors shows up in the Facebook ad (name removed). As a consumer, I don’t care about the business case behind them, social ads like this are lame (pointing at Facebook on this one.)
Now social shopping, thats going to be incredible. When it gets to the point where I update Facebook status saying I’m looking for a color printer and I see ads for a wifi color laser printer in the sidebar immediately, I would be psyched, because I’m *actually looking for* a networked color laser printer. But for a dating site? Yuk. Dating site advertising on Facebook is just as bad as it was on Myspace. With Myspace at least you had video vixens and bigger ads, on Facebook you can barely see the image. But people click, so its a moot point.
Remember when I complained about the misleading ads on Zoosk a few weeks ago? Theeey’rrrr baaaaaack. This time they point to SpeedDate.com and the same Crush site as before. Something seriously wonky going on with their ad system and its not getting any better.
I try to be ok with ads that entice singles to pay $9.99 via their mobile phone to find singles in their area, but its proving difficult to stomach at times given the quality of what you get after you pay. Really difficult to get on board, struggling with this because while there are hundreds of millions of dollars made this way, it doesn’t exactly sit well with me. There I go being judgemental and displaying my conscience again. Sorry, won’t happen again.
So Zoosk, what can we write about thats positive, interesting and remarkable? I know the PR team there and at every other dating site is working feverishly to put together messaging, stories and interviews for January. If you follow that sort of thing, check out dating site traffic at Compete.com or Quantcast.com. Sites are really turning up the spending right now, some up to $10-$30 million in the next month alone. Tis the season.
