• by Danielle Oster , October 22, 2024

As some consumers are falling out of love with dating apps, the categories’ top contenders are spending big to try to win them back.

MediaRadar analyzed advertising spending for the first seven months of 2024 across digital, out-of-home, paid social, print, radio and TV  for the six largest dating app advertisers: Bumble, eHarmony, Grindr, Hinge, Match.com, and Tinder. Combining spending from these six through July 31, the total was approximately $147 million. Comparatively, the top six spenders in the category combined spent around $220 million for all of 2023 – meaning spending is on pace to easily eclipse last year’s total. If combined spending continued at the same rate for the remainder of the year, the year-end total would total around $252 million.

Looking at the spending by individual platforms, the biggest change has been Bumble eclipsing Tinder as the app spending the most on advertising. Last year, Tinder easily took the top slot, spending nearly as much as the runner-up and number three spending platforms (Bumble and eHarmony, respectively) combined.

Through the end of July, Bumble had spent $44 million, edging out Tinder’s $41 million.

Bumble’s big bump (the platform spent $58 million for all of 2023) is perhaps not a surprise in light of its major rebranding efforts this year: a global brand refresh campaign back in April that included introducing a new visual identity. Bumble engaged in some restructuring of its internal marketing teams as well, with Chief Brand Officer Selby Drummond taking on Chief Marketing Officer duties this summer, responsible for overseeing all global marketing and growth initiatives for the brand.

The spending surge comes as consumers seem disillusioned with the endless swiping of dating apps. In a recent Forbes Health/OnePoll survey, 78% of respondents reported at least occasionally feeling burned out by the dating app experience. Thirty-one percent of millennials, and 28% of Gen Z respondents said they “often” felt such burnout.

The feeling is widespread enough that some new entries in the category are relying on it in their messaging. Over the summer, upstart Better In Person staged a launch campaign centered around calling out issues with existing platforms -- such as the prevalence of “f**kboys” and “catfishing” -- while presenting itself as an alternative..

In an earnings call with investors discussing its Q2 earnings report, Match Group -- parent company for brands including Match, Hinge, and Tinder -- reported that marketing spend had increased for the second quarter, primarily on efforts promoting Hinge and Tinder. “We expect overall Q3 marketing spend to be up about 6% year over year as we continue to roll out the latest Tinder marketing campaign,” Match Group CFO Gary Swidler said during the call, characterizing it is part of its strategy in investing in “growth brands, including Hinge” while partially offsetting costs by reducing spending for other brands.

Later in the call Swidler added, “We generally tend to pull back on marketing [for Q4], both because the audience isn't as focused and also because, of course, Q4 tends to be a much more expensive period to market against holiday marketing and so we tend to reduce our marketing spend in that quarter.”

During its own Q2 earnings call with investors, Bumble CEO Lidiane Jones responded to a question about whether to anticipate increases in marketing spending for the latter half of the year by saying, “We believe we have the right allocation of dollars. What we’re really focused on is … optimizing and tailoring our marketing strategy for markets.”

“As a percentage of revenue, Q3 [spending will likely be] a little bit less than what we spent in Q2. But in Q4, we do intend to take up marketing as a percentage of spend up again,” Bumble CFO Anu Subramanian added.