Will Tinder Ads Have Consumers Swiping Right?

Tinder looks to take advantage of its growth and audience by adding a more aggressive revenue stream to its business model. Tinder is working with Facebook's third-party ad tech network to allow advertisers to purchase ads programmatically. The company revealed the news during the Q4 earnings summary of its parent company, Match Group, with the firm's chairman and chief executive Greg Blatt saying that the move will allow the dating platform to serve ads in excess of its direct sales efforts in Q2.

He told investors Tinder was on track to triple its direct sales from Q1 last year, adding: "As we roll in Facebook we’re going to be able to start providing the inventory on top of that". The move means targeted in-app ads will be served up to Tinder users via Facebook's network, which was launched in 2014 to let brands advertising in the News Feed broaden their reach. Advertisers who don't want to have their content and creatively served up within the walls of dating apps can choose to opt-out.

Tinders new revenue stream

Advertising is Tinder’s second revenue stream after a premium subscription model. The app first started testing ads on the platform in 2015, sliding in branded content from the likes of Budweiser, Hero Condoms and Bite the Ballot between potential romantic matches in its signature card deck style design, this was done on an ad-hoc basis and for brands was a physical, manual and painful request process.

How Tinder programmatic ads will work

Tinder relies on a 'swipe' function to matchmake individual users, but once Facebook Audience Network has been plugged into the app it's unclear whether there would be a certain number of swipes granted before a user would be served up an ad. "Right now it’s literally all guesswork," said Blatt when he was quizzed on what the ad load would look like. "I mean it’s not a relevant number right now. The inventory level is so small, but Facebook gives us the ability to hit any ad load we want and I think in Q2 we are going to spend a fair amount of time testing that to try and find what our optimal level is," he continued. So, for now, its all in the clouds, but we'll keep you posted as news develops.

Tinder by numbers

Tinder has been coy about releasing its subscriber figures but claims that each day there are 26 million matches across 196 countries. This could be due to a bid to keep potential investors guessing and drive the valuation of the platform, however, we managed to source some numbers for 2016.

1. Number of downloads: 100 million
2. Number of matches: 10 billion
3. Number of daily swipes 1.6 billion
4. Number of daily matches 26 million
5. % of millennials on Tinder 79%
6. Estimated number of paying Tinder users: 1 million
7. Average time spent on Tinder: 35 minutes

Having millions of daily users, with an average of 35 minutes spent on the platform and a large number of millennials it makes perfect sense to drive advertising to its user base. Personally, I'm very interested to see how aggressive and segmented they're going to allow brands to get with ad targeting, will it be big brands only or could the little bistro down the road remind you that they should be considered as your next Tinder meet up spot.

Either way, advertisers and investors will want to see one thing. Can Tinder provide viable B2C matches and make its advertising worthwhile or will it be a costly brand exposure exercise?

Contact us

If you want to know more about programmatic ads for your site don’t be shy we’re happy to assist. Simply contact us here

Source:

• expandedramblings.com
• thedrum.com

Tags: facebook, Social Media