With an internet population of over 70 million, Germany is one of the most attractive countries in the EU for online businesses. A specifically interesting industry is online dating. The increasing number of singles, living mainly in cities like Berlin and Köln, attracts a wide range of online dating players to the German market.
A relatively new one is LOVOO. The dating app was created in 2011 and is now growing faster than all of the longer-existing players like Parship, NEU.de and eDarling. Week after week, Lovoo is in the top most downloaded social apps in Germany, right after evergreens like Facebook and Whatsapp. The free app for iOS, Android and web uses your phone’s location data to find nearby matches for you. Potential matches can be approached by messages, kisses and virtual gifts.
German singles have embraced the app. An estimated 4 million Germans downloaded LOVOO to their phones, and the app scores 4 respectively 4.5 stars in the iPhone and Android stores. What is the secret behind the success of LOVOO? Lees verder Four reasons why so many German singles use LOVOO →
September 16 and 17 the iDate conference took place in Cologne. I opened the conference with a keynote on the Dutch and Benelux online dating market. A selection of the slides can now be found on SlideShare, available to everyone.
Contents:
– Introduction to BeNeLux & The Netherlands
– Size of the online dating market
– Overview of players
– Largest dating sites: Lexa and Relatieplanet
– Case: Twoo – the fastest growing
– Case: Paiq – the most intelligent
– Case: The Inner Circle – the most trending
– Mobile trends
– Outlook: dating in 2015
– Recommendations for Dutch market
Feel free to contact me for more information on the presentation or the Dutch online dating industry.
One of the keynotes of iDate conference in Cologne this morning was the presentation by Mark Brooks on the online dating market in Europe.
Mark writes for Online Personals Watch since 2004, and is based in the UK. In his keynote presentation he summarized some of the macro developments in the different European markets, mainly focused on the EU5. This group of largest EU markets consists of UK, Germany, Italy, France, Spain
A summary of the highlights from Mark’s presentation:
- Fastest growing online dating market in terms of pagviews in the EU is Italy (+11% YoY visits). EU5 average is +3%.
- In UK, PlentyOfFish (free) is largest datingsite, and at least twice as big as Match.com.
- When you take into account mobile, Tinder is #1 free site in UK and not PlentyOfFish. Average user of Tinder uses the service 11 (!) times a day
- International players dominate most EU5 markets, especially UK market.
- Addressable market for mobile dating in EU5 is 241 million smartphone users.
- Interesting development: eDarling enters new verticals and is moving into job and real estate market.
- Events are back in the dating industry; not because they’re profitable, but because they attract new user segments to dating sites.
Quite some visitors of Dating Insider are coming from abroad. According to my Google Analytics stats of last month, almost 20% of visits was from outside The Netherlands or Belgium. People from overseas have let me know they are interested in the online dating market in Europe, and specifically The Netherlands. Some of them use tools like Google Translate to convert content from this site to their own language. To make life easier for readers from abroad, I will start an experiment: writing blogposts in English. This is the first one.
One out of five people in The Netherlands had a relationship that started online. That is one of the outcomes from an extensive research commissioned by dating site Lexa.nl. Lexa is part of Meetic since 2006, and is the largest Dutch datingsite. An independent agency questioned 6500 people, single and non-single, to find out how the Dutch meet their partner nowadays. Lees verder Research on dating market in The Netherlands: more than 20% had a relationship that started online →
Nieuws, trends en achtergronden uit de online datingmarkt