• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, July 7, 2009

Showing its affection for market segmentation, IAC/Interactive's Match.com on Tuesday agreed to buy People Media for $80 million from private equity firm American Capital. Focused on specific demographic groups, People Media operates 27 subscription-based dating sites -- made up of roughly 255,000 paying members -- including BlackPeopleMeet.com, SingleParentMeet.com, and SeniorPeopleMeet.com.

"It's clear that some people are drawn to online communities defined by their own demographic characteristics," said Greg Blatt, CEO of Match.com. "The combination of Match.com and People Media can accelerate each business' current growth trends in a variety of ways," Blatt added. For example, through "the sharing of product development and online marketing expertise, and the ability to market a broader array of services to the combined customer base."

People Media -- which reported $11.6 million of EBITDA in 2008 -- apparently saw the support of IAC and Match.com as the quickest road to growth. "We will accelerate our growth and cement our market leadership position," Josh Meyers, CEO of People Media.

Founded back in 2002, People Media's network presently reaches nearly 4 million Web users each month, according to comScore.

Whether or not the acquisition will satiate IAC's ambitions in the area of online dating is unclear. On a conference call with analysts earlier this year, CEO Barry Diller expressed an interest in acquiring Yahoo Personals -- valued at about $500 million -- and said preliminary talks had already taken place.

According to comScore, Match.com attracted about 5.8 million unique monthly users in May, and reported $9.9 million in operating income before amortization last year.

Jupiter Research forecasts that the online personals space will reach $1.2 billion in worldwide revenues this year.