OPW - Sep 25 - The European Internet Dating Conference in London is drawing to a close now. Woome, ChristianConnection.co.uk, EasyDate, White Label Dating, The Guardian newspaper, Bharat Matrimony, comScore and Google spoke among others.
Jackie Elton from Christian Connection spoke on the subject of attracting women to dating sites. Results from a survey that she ran showed that 35% of female idaters were very concerned about safety issues, whereas only 16% of males considered it very important for their online dating experience. She said that women needed more empathy and time when calling in with customer service issues. Guys often call in to complain that something is broken, and they suggest fixes, whereas women are more likely to call in to find out how to get something to work, and would need reassurance, and possibly an apology.
Jackie also suggested that there were many differences between American and European daters. Americans spend a lot more per date and tend to take dating more seriously and be a little more formal. Europeans are more casual about dating. Americans also generally believe that its ok to date several people at once, whereas Europeans are less inclined to think that dating multiple at once s ok. Americans spend 6x per capita on self-help analysis books than Europeans, according to Amazon.
Mike Shaw from comScore gave an excellent talk, with some fascinating analysis. Here are a few keypoints.
- A hundred million people visit dating sites globally each month
- The global traffic to online dating sites is up 5% in 15 months
- The North American market is flat
- Turkey, Israel, and Canada have the highest proportion of internet users visiting idating sites
- Over the last 2 years there's been an 87% growth in uniques to social networking sites in Europe and a 21% growth in uniques going to online dating sites in Europe
- The average time spent on European social networks has gone up 34% in the last 2 years, while time spent on internet dating sites has decreased 30%
- 8% of the population account for 85% of clicks in ad campaigns
- The British have the lowerst CTR at just 0.08% CTR
- Plentyoffish is the biggest display ads advertiser in the UK and USA
- Out of 56 billion online display ads shown in the UK in June 2009, 370 million were to internet dating sites
- Online dating is growing fastest in Europe
