OPW - Sep 12 - Here’s a smattering of 26 things I learned at iDate Cologne, the 39th iDate Internet Dating Conference from Mon/Tue this week. The highlights were Facebook and Match/Meetic speaking.
- Facebook cut all Internet dating advertisers a year ago because the rate of people clicking the x on ads to get rid of them, was 2.7x the average. This is called the XTR rate. Internet dating ads were running 0.0081% vs 0.003% for other ads. This was not acceptable to the head of user experience at Facebook, Mark Zuckerburg.
- Users also complained about the ads being inappropriate. There’s a term for that called MOSI. Misleading, Offensive, Sexually Explicit, Inaccurate. The Internet dating industry MOSI rate was close to three times the average. Again, completely unacceptable to Mark Zuckerburg, of course. So he said, if iDating is ruining the experience, we have to cut it off. And they did!
- Then Facebook white-listed 25 Internet dating companies and reviewed all their ads manually. They’re expanding the program again and its 50 companies strong now. Only pure PG, with extremely non-offensive ads will make the cut. The current MOSI rate is now under the site-wide Facebook average.
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- People in the Netherlands spend the most on dates in Europe. Typically 66 Euros per date.
- Niche dating leads are twice as expensive in the Netherlands but convert twice as well compared to generic dating.
- Internet dating comparison sites are the #1 source of traffic in the Netherlands.
- People on the UK spend the most online and on mobile phones of any European country.
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- Net Dating Assistants is a service that charges a monthly fee plus a per hour fee to Internet daters to help with their profile, and get them out on dates with people. They have 15 employees and were started 3 years ago. 70% of clients are male, typically age ~35.
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- In a talk from ScamSurvivors.com they suggested that the Internet dating industry would never fully eradicate scammers, but are best to manually review profiles and automatically look for phrases that are most often used in profile scripts.
- e.g. scammers will often use the words…“I hate scammers” or “scammers keep away” in a profile text. These words actually indicate that it is indeed a scammer, and that other scammers should not bother trying to scam that particular user.
- The one thing scammers never seem to change is their profile scripts and communication scripts.
- The more attempts a person makes to mention their email or IM, the more likely it is to be a scammer.
- Most scammers claiming to be from the UK will use a +44 70 number. It’s a premium rate ‘follow-me’ number.
- Use images.google.com to check on profile images.
- Give users a simple way to report scammers
- Don’t just delete the profiles. Post them to scamsurvivors.com/dsf.html so they can be searched.
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- We learned about various regional payment providers and trends. e.g. Internet+ is an ISP based billing service that is now becoming popular in France. It is now the most popular alternative billing method in France.
- Regional billing options can vary greatly, so its worthwhile reviewing regularly and offering the key options in each country.
- Get your marketing people to talk to your payment people! You’ve got to research the best local billing options, and do AB testing on them!
- Neteller, Onebip, PaySafeCard and Dimoco were on the panel. All have strong products for the Internet dating industry, worthy of your attention. Ask them which country they’re strongest in, and test their first.
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- Meetic/Match spoke and said “Tinder is the biggest game changer in our industry for the last 10 years.”
- Match Group now have 3.5m paid subscribers globally. With the highest growth rate in international members, an 8% growth year over year.
- Efforts should be made to raise ARPU, rather than chasing down new members, and overspending.
- Match is Tinderizing its products. i.e. match.com mobile integrated swipe and a constant stream of profiles, and its working well.
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- Dating sites should be using Whatsapp and SMS for marketing. i.e. message notifications. Go cross channel for better results.
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- Overall, the Internet dating industry is growing in terms of membership growth, and declining in revenues. The largest growth is in mobile dating. Zoosk is a monetization leader, with 41% of its revenues coming from mobile.
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The Internet Dating Conference is about meeting peers, and learning and sharing. Both from people presenting, and from people in the corridors, and from picking the brains of exhibitors. And, oh yes, its fun to meet like-minds in the same industry. :-)
I hope to see you at the next one in Vegas in January. It’s the main event of the year.
Marc announced that there will be an iDate in Beijing China in 2015.
If you have any ideas for improving the conference, or people you’d like to refer to Marc for speaking. That would be great! We appreciate your feedback and ideas and contributions. Please email me at mark@courtlandbrooks.com or Marc Lesnick at info@internetdatingconference.com. Marc Lesnick runs the conference. I help out here and there.
Post by Mark Brooks @
