Lavalife Teams With Vivendi To Advertise Online Dating Service
- by Ken Liebeskind , July 2, 2002
The sites are the ideal place to find Lavalife's audience, singles looking to meet other singles. Lavalife, one of the largest online singles networks, is a $120 million business, according to vice president of Web business Paul Gallucci. It has signed a three-year agreement with Vivendi to integrate its dating service on Vivendi sites.
Starting today, visitors to the Vivendi sites can be linked to Lavalife microsites. A variety of online components, including Eyeblaster and Flash animations, will advertise the Lavalife links on the sites. In addition, MP4.com, a video site, will stream Lavalife television commercials.
"This is high direct marketing impact with great properties," Gallucci says of the Vivendi effort. "They offer a very diverse customer base with different demographics, such as games, music, the casino types. You target different segments."
Derrick Oien, president of VUNet's music & media group, confirms that the sites reach a diverse audience, with Mp3.com a music site, Getmusic.com a music video site, Rollingstone.com a music magazine site and Flipside.com a gaming and entertainment site. The sites reach a large audience with a male 18-34 skew, he says.
The TV spots on Mp4.com originally aired in Lavalife's campaign in New York that ran the spots on prime time shows including Ally McBeal and Everybody Loves Raymond. The campaign also included newspaper, the New York issues of national magazines Time and Newsweek, transit ads and grass roots efforts such as boxes of mints handed out at Starbucks restaurants which clicked to open, like Lavalife, where you click to find dates.
For Toronto based Lavalife, the Vivendi campaign is its "biggest U.S. expansion," according to Oien. Terms of the agreement weren't announced.
