Online Love – Cupid goes Capitalist – a little background

In 2002, online dating had an appeal that has spread internationally and given rise to many specialty websites that cater to certain types of relationships, ethnicities, religions, age groups, geographic areas and interests. The ability to weed out people who aren’t compatible and to get to know someone from a safe distance before a face-to-face encounter has spurred millions of people to turn to online dating.

“Matchmaking and online dating has become big business, with dating services estimated to be worth $2.14 billion in 2011 and forecast to grow 4.7% per year to $2.54 billion by 2015.   The leaders include IAC’s Match.com with $480 million, eHarmony with $270 million, and FriendFinder Networks with $233 million.  Mobile applications, Asia, Brazil, and niche sites are key drivers of future growth. Marketdata expects 7.2% annual growth to $1.76 billion by 2015. The large players continue to acquire smaller competitors.  The Internet and dating reality TV shows (The Millionaire Matchmaker, The Bachelor, others) have brought these services into the mainstream and taken the stigma out of the profession (source:  Marketdata Enterprises 2012).

Online dating is now the third most popular way for singles to meet, ranking behind the workplace and school (#1) and friends and family (#2), but ahead of bars (#4), according to an eHarmony study. ~113M people visit dating sites each month.

Mobile dating has also become a huge business.  According to Juniper Research, the mobile dating market is expected to grow to $1.4 billion by 2013, and startups are poised to take advantage of that growth. A recent study by Skout noted that 69% of people were comfortable meeting up with someone they met on their iPhone, and 40% were using a mobile dating service while out at bars, clubs and restaurants. The U.S.-based app also lets romance-seekers view “hotspots” on Google Maps as a fiery glow, representing what locations are currently trending.  Grindr uses geo-location to enable users to find other men within close proximity. This is accomplished through a user interface that displays a grid of user pictures, arranged from nearest to farthest away. Tapping on a picture will display a brief profile for that user, as well as the option to chat, send pictures, and share one’s location (source:  onlinepersonalswatch.com 2012).

The Paradigm Shift – Pay with your personal interests as a payment option

Local advertisers will spend more on digital ads than in newspapers by 2013, and soon after the ad market will rapidly shift to mobile devices, according to the latest forecast from Borrell Associates. By 2013 the proliferation of mobile devices — combined with local advertisers’ budding affair with mobile couponing, text messaging, social media and apps — is likely to cause a precipitous decline in ads served up on desktop computers. We’re forecasting that 88% of all local online advertising will be viewed on tablets, smart phones or GPS− enabled laptops by 2016. (source:  Borrell Associates)

About six out of 10 local TV advertisers expect to spend more on digital advertising this year, led by investments in social media and mobile marketing. A Borrell Associates survey of nearly 1,000 local businesses that buy TV advertising found that 47 percent plan to increase spending on social media marketing, and 37 percent are likely to spend more on mobile. (source:  Borrell Associates) Borrell Associates is also forecasting 18% overall growth as local online advertising goes from $15.7 billion this year to $18.5 billion. In addition, a subset of online, mobile advertising (smart phones and tablets), will push the total expenditure to more than $26 billion by 2016.

A recent Jupiter Research (a Jupiter media Corp. division) study found “most online consumers still don’t know exactly what they want when surfing for products online.” The study suggests marketing should always be proactive, with specific calls to action for different demonstrated behaviors. It also promotes the use of behavioral targeting as an inferred solution to mend the data gap between investigative/information-seeking actions (search) and navigational/experiential actions (online media). There’s currently a gap between search and media. Though Google’s Ad Sense and Overture’s Content Match can contextually match up consumers’ interest with keywords within the content of a site, they don’t address the broken data link between the disciplines (search and media). Search still exists in a silo, apart from other online media. Whatever terms a user searches, results are only based on the word that user typed in, rather than interpreting where that user’s been. Conversely, behaviorally targeted online banners don’t take into consideration which keywords that user previously searched. If behavioral targeting is about understanding consumer actions and patterns (and it is!), then the data marriage between search and targeting is critical to future industry growth. Integrating consumer search data with behaviorally targeted online media is a logical step toward a holistic understanding of how consumers use the online medium.

In 2003 our Social Aggregation Engine, DateApp Launched 

DateApp was the provider was a social media creator for online dating. Our webmasters supplied the traffic and we acted as a clearinghouse for the online dating industry from member billing, advertising and site moderation. Our strategy is the domination of the online industry through saturation of the marketplace. This strategy will drive overall corporate earnings, while decreasing the high cost associated with consumer market penetration. DateApp networks allowed our partners to quickly create and customize their dating site(s) within minutes. DateApp handled all of the back-end functions such as site administration, profile approvals, hardware maintenance, continual site upgrades, and application development. Our partners’ only real responsibility is marketing to their consumer/end user. Three major players with established client base will be participating in the initial roll out, to include two of the top 5, IVR, phone dating companies. Moreover, we allowed consumers to pay for upgraded access with their personal information by taking surveys with potential advertisers. It was discovered by matching advertisers to consumers through a proprietary ad algorithm, we were able to increase the co-reg advertising rate to 30%, whereas the industry average was less than 6%.

Within 12 months, DateApp operated 10,336 online / sales affiliates within 13 months in US, Europe and Asia. Our lifestyle ad server that allowed members to pay with their personal information in lieu of their credit card generated over 2 M leads via social media ad server to target and advertise to specific consumer lifestyles which were sold to 166 advertisers in 14 countries within the first 12 months. Most impressive concerning the DateApp venture is that our platform captured over Captured 2.8 M consumers within first 12 months of operation.

The Social platform and Ad network acquired by Adreka, Inc in 2006