(Online Dating Industry Journal) According to a news article on Online Dating Magazine, online dating service WebDate is using funny promotional videos to bring attention to their site and it's working. From the article:
"It's pure genius," says Joe Tracy, publisher of Online Dating Magazine. "Instead of doing the generic banner ads or commercials, Webdate has found a way to play upon people's funny bone and it's working. The service's traffic count and signups are skyrocketing."
Online Dating Magazine notes that some of the video's on Webdate are now "getting up to 100,000 unique downloads an hour."
Kim's Comments:
While I don't like some of the more risque recent videos (although I do get the humor in them) the ads focused on "online dating fraud" and promoting their video chat feature are very clever. Some of the more sexually focused advertising may be reminiscent of True.com but there is one big difference I can see between the two - True.com tries to play the "safer dating" angle with its promotion of background checks while, at the same time, appealing to men who may go to the site thinking it is a way to get a quick hook up...WebDate makes fun of the hook-up mentality in a somewhat playful manner. In any case, they seem to be getting a lot more traffic because of the videos, I know I was entertained watching them and gave the dating site another look as a result.
Online Dating Magazine notes that some of the video's on Webdate are now "getting up to 100,000 unique downloads an hour."
Right, and i'm getting 100,000 signups an hour.
Ranking.websearch.com and alexa estimate webdates traffic at around 40,000 visitors a day tops.
Posted by: markus | April 11, 2006 at 05:35 PM
Markus,
As a fan of your work I'm sure you know the inner and outer workings of traffic analysis. With that in mind there are a couple of things to keep in mind here:
1) If you've visited the site you'll notice the videos are on a sub-domain, not the main domain, thus it's not going to count as "traffic" to Webdate.com.
2) These are download numbers publicly provided by Webdate, not something pulled out of thin air. I've seen other sites publishing the videos (likely without permission, but I'm sure Webdate doesn't mind the extra promotion) and major blog links to them, thus that number would not surprise me even though it does seem high. Just one Slashdot link or Drudge link can provide that type of "traffic" for a limited time. But, alas, I do defer to these numbers being provided by Webdate.
3) The reliability of Alexa traffic numbers is extremely suspect at times. I've heard of companies that have had all their employees download the Alexa toolbar at work and home and visit the business' sites to inflate their "traffic numbers". It's not a definitive means of identifying true traffic numbers. I know my numbers don't count because I use FireFox and they don't have a toolbar for FireFox yet.
Also, I'm sure you would be getting 100,000 signups an hour if people weren't busy clicking on your Google Adsense links and making you thousands a day! :-) You've done a great job at building an awesome profit model (major ad revenue + huge user base + large traffic numbers). I commend you on this and thank you for the insight you share in your comments on this blog.
Posted by: Joe Tracy | April 11, 2006 at 06:55 PM
Joe,
Alexa and ranking.websearch.com both aggregate subdomain traffic. As you say traffic rankings aren't that accurate, but its a completely different thing to over state your traffic then it is to under state it.
Webdate has a history of "overstating" things :) To give a comparison, comscore says that match.com only gets 35,000 uniques a hour in the USA.
Posted by: markus | April 13, 2006 at 01:08 PM