• by February 26, 2004

Online dating sites are increasingly attracting 18-to-24-year-old lovelorn singles--offering prime opportunities for marketers to target the younger demographic, according to a new report on online dating by Hitwise.

The firm, which provides interactive market intelligence, found that while most of the top 10 online dating sites attract singles ages 35 to 44, Friendster (www.friendster.com) and Meet me at Hot or Not (meetme.hotornot.com) have a predominantly younger audience--(ages 18 to 24 and 25 to 34). Women ages 18-24 comprise 35.33 percent of visitors to Friendster, while 25-to-34-year-olds represent 33.07 percent. Thirty percent of visitors to online dating newbie Meet me at Hot or Not are 18-to-24-year- olds.

"It's an interesting implication for advertisers, because before you were looking at a pretty solid 35-to-44 demographic; now there's an opportunity to tap into a younger demographic," says Bill Tancer, VP-research, Hitwise.

"One of the reasons why Friendster was able to attract the younger demographic is it's not a traditional dating site--you're not going there specifically to date, but dating might fall out from that," Tancer asserts. The report also notes that Friendster skews toward women--58.6 percent.

In late 2003, Forrester Research reported that one in 10 people who use the Internet gravitate to online personals; that's about 40 million visits to online dating sites each month. The proliferation of online dating sites-- Lavalife, eHarmony, Match.com, Jdate, Yahoo! Personals, Black Planet, Nerve, and the rise of niche services like KissyKat.com and OverweightDate.com, are fueling one of the fastest growing areas on the Web.

Hitwise also found that 33.3 percent of visitors to online dating sites arrive via search engines and directories, and 23.3 percent via email services and instant messaging. Many sites are advertising heavily to lure men, who comprise 52.08 percent of visitors to online dating sites. Search marketing, email marketing, and promotion via instant messaging are all standard ad vehicles. "Instant messaging [in particular] seems like it's a very strong vehicle for these sites--it lures the younger demographic," Tancer says.

The report's message to marketers? "If you're trying to reach that younger demographic, looking toward social networking sites such as Friendster would be great places to go, as well as advertising in instant messaging clients and email advertising," Tancer emphasizes.

The top five dating sites for the week ending January 31, 2004 were: Yahoo!'s Yahoo! Personals, which racked up 19.97 percent of the market's visits; Match.com (10.36 percent); American Singles (8.09 percent); eHarmony (5.01 percent); and Friendster (4.44 percent), according to Hitwise. The report also suggests that portals with related dating sites such as Yahoo! and MSN, which offers dating services through Match.com (msn.match.com), successfully reel in traffic from multiple sources including email, search, IM, home pages, and lifestyle/health programming.

Hitwise conducted its research into the online dating sector from January 2003-January 2004. The Hitwise research panel is comprised of 10 million U.S. Internet users who access the Web at home, work, and school, 7.5 million of which originate from Internet Service Providers and 2.5 million from an opt-in panel. The samples are weighted.

As a courtesy to MediaDailyNews readers, MediaPost has made the Hitwise online dating report available here: Hitwise Dating Report