Zoosk changes their policies, is this a new trend in dating?

MrBradshaw

MrBradshaw

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They got what is by any account an AMAZING start by using affiliates to the max.

Now, they are cutting off a lot of them by not allowing paid search on the three major engines.

Also, they are slowing some Facebook and POF advertising by requiring approvals on all ad creatives.

These terms seem to be in effect across all the ad networks. It looks like they are taking things almost completely in house.

Is this going to be a new trend across all dating sites?
 


To answer your question, yes. Dating sites that graduate from the cutthroat and misconstruing nature of DR advertising, namely in social traffic, saves them from adolescent bullshit (i.e affiliates scraping images for Facebook from bing image search, which probably puts them at an indirect liability image copyright infringement ). If the focus shifts to brand longevity, which it probably is with Zoosk's revenue, expect affiliates to get pushed the fuck out of the space and replaced by a mild internal effort in marketing.

Thank god we still have shady adult offers, I suppose
 
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To add to this, they no longer allow words such as "free dating service", "free online dating" , while promoting there site
 
there are a million dating offers, seems like you could switch it to another company pretty easily
 
Yeah, they seem to be getting huge. This past week I've been seeing a lot of commercials of theirs on television(later at night)
 
Zoosk is a hype, it will pass. It was great MONTHs ago, now its super saturated. It isn't as strong as it used to be. The only real advantage is they take 18+ traffic. True.com is MUCH better.
 
This is common trend for a lot of companies, and one that should not be surprising to any of us. Once they learn where the most profitable traffic is, why not try and take that in house?

Dating has been my largest earner for 5 years now. All dating offers go through trends and cycles. If you have done a lot of volume with them and have built a relationship, expect an on again / off again cycle where they want the traffic, and then start arguing that it is not backing out for them.

Zoosk is a great reminder that you can do something new in an established industry, and with the power of affiliates explode a brand extremely quickly.

Now that Zoosk has that brand, they will have a new laser like focus on profitability and brand protection.

So, the real question is what can you do to adapt to such trends. Some thoughts:
-white labels / ping trees - build your own
-offline marketing - new channels, new traffic can get old vendors excited about what you can bring to them
-new verticals - mobile dating, niche dating, etc.

As a marketer, your are only limited by the power of your on creativity.

It is just the natural cycle of business, accelerated by the power of internet marketing.
 
nice post.

chrisr said:
This is common trend for a lot of companies, and one that should not be surprising to any of us. Once they learn where the most profitable traffic is, why not try and take that in house?

Dating has been my largest earner for 5 years now. All dating offers go through trends and cycles. If you have done a lot of volume with them and have built a relationship, expect an on again / off again cycle where they want the traffic, and then start arguing that it is not backing out for them.

Zoosk is a great reminder that you can do something new in an established industry, and with the power of affiliates explode a brand extremely quickly.

Now that Zoosk has that brand, they will have a new laser like focus on profitability and brand protection.

So, the real question is what can you do to adapt to such trends. Some thoughts:
-white labels / ping trees - build your own
-offline marketing - new channels, new traffic can get old vendors excited about what you can bring to them
-new verticals - mobile dating, niche dating, etc.

As a marketer, your are only limited by the power of your on creativity.

It is just the natural cycle of business, accelerated by the power of internet marketing.
Click to expand...

Niche dating and Micro Niche Dating are solid.
 
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