• by Mark Naples , August 7, 2003

Much has been made recently of the success of the fast growing online dating sector, with Match.com, Yahoo! personals and multiple, other, more demographically-targeted services such as Jdate proliferating. Match.com has been such a revenue producer for Barry Diller's USA Interactive that the company bought Udate.com, which also operates kiss.com, in December.

The perhaps ironic fact about these sites is that their still-growing number of users, many of whom had tended to stigmatize online dating for years, are old and young, rich and poor, teaching elementary school or studying medicine, or "between jobs." I'm amazed at the cross section that is either much more impressive and diverse demographically than expected, or is lying about their occupations as naturally as they assuredly are about their height or weight.

Most single people I know have visited a personals site, if not used one. And, like some of you, I, too, know people who became husband and wife after meeting as SWM and SWF. It's not just an urban legend.

Match has done a fantastic job of branding, and they provide the online personals for prestigious sites such as the New York Times Digital. But, Match is not an advertising-supported site, per se, a fact that I should think will be reversed in time.

But, registration fees and on-site advertising aren't the best ways for companies that run sites like these to make money anyway. One such company seems to know that better than most, and is poised for a big move.

Imagine if there were a company that could aggregate personal sites across multiple user interfaces around the world and serve ads to their visitors based on the extremely precise criteria that sites' members provide. Zip Code targeting of ads? How about targeting across a network based on purchase habits or sexual preference or other, more difficult-to-discern sensibilities? How about aggregating and repurposing that very precisely catalogued media asset for co-registration dollars and DM? Yeah, baby - now THAT's sexy.

What if this company provided a template back end for both would-be members and the sites they see the personals on, making revenue generation easier for each individual site in the network, and making the personals placed on one site potentially available throughout?

By now, most readers of this space are familiar with Nerve, the extremely fun site that provides "literate smut." But, Nerve is just one site that is part of Spring Street Networks. Spring Street hosts and serves ads for personals on other major, branded sites such as The Onion, Esquire Magazine, Boston.com, Time Out, the Real Cities sites and others, and they probably host the personals for whichever alternative newspaper you read, such as the Village Voice.

Match and Yahoo! Personals, the two individual online dating sites with the most users, are positively antiseptic compared to the user experience on sites that have Spring Street host their singles bar. If you scroll through Match, you feel like you're in the suburbs. But, Nerve is edgier, projecting a more urbane cool that, well, seems to go hand in hand with the kind of self-depiction these sites require from users would dictate.

Already very healthy financially, Spring Street Networks closed a $6 million round of financing from Battery Ventures in July. Why?

"We're not just building one brand, we're nurturing a lifestyle idiom within multiple brands," said Louis Kanganis, Spring Street Networks' CEO. "Our partners reflect an aggregated media asset based on lifestyle - online dating is just the starting point. So, while our content and paid subscriptions draw users and keep them on our pages, they opportunities on the back-end are almost limitless. That's the business we're looking to build."

While users of most online personals sites stick around for a couple of months, Spring Street's paid content partners are turning subscribers into personals' users, and vice versa. Plus, some of Spring Street's partners boast an at-home broadband rate of more than 50%, increasing page views, rich media opportunities, and revenue.

"Online personals as a segment is growing rapidly, and our ability to target visitors on our site is unparalleled," said Kanganis. "We keep a user as a member for much longer than the industry norm. And our ability to target these users and provide worthwhile sponsorship and other marketing options for our advertisers enhances the entire experience."

As I mentioned before, there is something almost self-conscious about most online personals sites, especially Match. Users there always seem to preface their ads with "I can't believe I'm doing this." But, that's not the case on those sites that are hosted by Spring Street. We're going to be seeing a lot more from online dating sites as they come up with new ways to monetize their audience. I know that most of you have been on these sites, so while it would be fun to hear about individual's experiences, I'm more interested in hearing from marketers who have leveraged the kind of extremely precise targeting that Spring Street is now providing. Any takers?