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Is It a Match?: Online Dating Apps Want People to Keep “Swiping Right”

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Chandler Willison

Senior Analyst

It’s cuffing season! With winter approaching, singles are looking to find a partner for the colder months. This is good news for online dating apps, which have become one of the leading ways for daters to meet.

Utilizing M Science data, Research Analyst Chandler Willison noted that certain times of year attract more of these online daters. “There’s certainly a catalyst for joining the apps, certain times of year like winter,” he said. “Oftentimes when you see changes, when people move from location to location, that’s when we’ll see lifts.”

For younger users, increased activity on dating apps such as Hinge, Bumble, or Tinder coincide with the academic calendar. "Starting in September, we see a pretty big change in spending because people get to college. They want to start meeting people.” Willison explained. “There's the added angle of moving to a new town or city. There may be more potential matches compared to your hometown. This can also be true during summer, as people return home.”

Understanding this seasonal growth informs how top apps are performing. “Typically, we will discuss growth on a year over year basis, so we can compare these time periods on seasonality,” Willison said. “Around winter, summer, and the school year is when we see inflections on spend, which is important for year over year considerations.” Utilizing M Science data, Research Analyst Chandler Willison noted that certain times of year attract more of these online daters. “There’s certainly a catalyst for joining the apps, certain times of year like winter,” he said. “Oftentimes when you see changes, when people move from location to location, that’s when we’ll see lifts.”

For younger users, increased activity on dating apps such as Hinge, Bumble, or Tinder coincide with the academic calendar. "Starting in September, we see a pretty big change in spending because people get to college. They want to start meeting people.” Willison explained. “There's the added angle of moving to a new town or city. There may be more potential matches compared to your hometown. This can also be true during summer, as people return home.”

Understanding this seasonal growth informs how top apps are performing. “Typically, we will discuss growth on a year over year basis, so we can compare these time periods on seasonality,” Willison said. “Around winter, summer, and the school year is when we see inflections on spend, which is important for year over year considerations.”

  • Industry Activity

Online dating services aren’t anything new these days. Match.com first launched in 1995 – nearly 30 years ago. With the proliferation of smartphones, online dating has only gotten bigger, revolutionizing the dating landscape. “It’s been a very stark shift. It hasn’t slowed down much,” Willison added. Simply put, relationships have moved from face-to-face to phone-to-phone.

So how do these platforms operate?

Nearly all of the dating apps offer free signup. With no financial barrier to entry, users can join easily, and they do. “There’s a significant amount of monthly average users and daily average users across these apps that are unpaid. This business mainly relies not on advertising, but on paid subscriptions and ala carte purchases,” said Willison. Paid subscriptions provide user experience improvements, such as increased matches, better exposure, preferable connections, filtering, and so on. “Most of the purchasing that we observe is in terms of subscription, rather than ala carte, which is a smaller percentage of overall revenue across the board,” he continued. “For Tinder, Bumble, and Hinge, these three apps determine the business and the overall direction for the respective companies of Match Group and Bumble.”

  • Market Makeup

Match Group (MTCH) claims some of the largest names in the industry from Tinder, to Hinge, to OkCupid. Over the years, Match Group has acquired several online dating brands. “Match purchases a lot of competition,” Willison said. “Most of the time it seems like they’re buying smaller apps and growing them from there.”

While they may seem like a dominant force in the space, Match Group is not the only big name. “Within our data, Bumble is the second largest app in terms of spend and users, right after Tinder and followed by Hinge,” Willison said. “These apps are not targeted at a specific demographic, but they do have their specific market niches.” 

Perception can attract different users and use cases. Culturally, Tinder has come to assume a reputation for more casual relationships. “In the last year or so, Match Group has been marketing Tinder to intentioned daters. But the casualness of Tinder is still very much the core to its identity,” he said. This reputation compares to Bumble (BMBL), which has promoted its app as putting women first. “Women are in the driver’s seat; they’re in control of the situation. Online dating can be not fun for many people — for women as well as men. But specifically, Bumble is oriented toward making a better environment for women to interact with people.” 

Meanwhile, relationships are also essential to Hinge’s branding. “Hinge has been oriented toward intentioned daters since its inception. That’s its tagline,” Willison said. And it’s working for them. “Hinge has exhibited really strong growth in the last several years. It has continued to grow quite strongly in terms of spend and payers within our data,” he added. 

Other apps target specific demographics, whether that be by ethnicity, sexual orientation, race, religion, interest, career path, or belief system. Some of these include Grindr, BLK, Muzmatch, Chispa, Christian Mingle, JDate, and the League. But these narrower apps are not as popular as the general platforms. “From our observations, non-demographic specific apps account for the vast majority of overall users and spend,” Willison explained. 

  • Users

The move from in-person to online dating has had effects on society’s socialization. “This is where people are in the dating environment,” Willison said. “But there is a gender dynamic at play.” 

Across the popular dating apps, men account for most users and contribute the majority of spend. “The difficulty for men on dating apps is how to stand out. They’re competing for attention,” Willison said. In order to increase their profile visibility, some male users will opt for ala carte subscription options that advance them in the digital queue. 

Willison said some women experience the inverse problem. “Typically, the reported negative experiences include being overloaded with lower-quality connections. There are additional problems such as harassment or other negative user experiences,” he added. “The ala carte and subscriptions can help women filter and find improved matches.” 

Because of the influx of men on these apps, companies like Match and Bumble appear to be looking to court female payers. “These companies talk about how important it is to attract female users, especially Gen Z female users, to their platform. That is a key indicator to the apps’ future growth,” Willison said.

In addition to gender trends, regionality can play a role in user success with online dating apps. “Most of the users are going to be in cities, so it’s easier to get more matches in a city rather than a rural or suburban area,” Willison explained. Scarcity in less populated areas leads some users to purchase geography-specific options. “Even if people don’t live in a certain city, they might purchase a weekly subscription when they visit or are on vacation.” 

  • Industry Difficulties

Recently, the online dating industry has come under scrutiny for gamification, a process by which a service relies on factors typical in game playing. By utilizing these game elements, people can seek similar rewards with online dating as they would in a digital game, like obtaining favorable outcomes and receiving instant gratification. This presents risk of addiction to and a reliance on matches when using the apps.

Despite this, Willison finds this phenomenon could now be isolating users. “The effect of gamification does perhaps turn a lot of people off from dating in general,” he said.  “Just because the share of people meeting has shifted online does not mean that there is the same amount of people dating.” The constant swiping and messaging have apparently left some daters with fatigue. “In the case of some men and women, there’s been a share who have just dropped out entirely. That’s a trend that we see in some geographies.” 

Some of this behavior is also a response to the COVID pandemic, which shifted nearly all dating virtual for over a year. Presently, some regions are seeing more of a rebound than others. “While the space has recovered better in America and parts of Europe, in places like Japan and South Korea, since the pandemic when a lot of dating took a hit, things really haven’t recovered very well. Which indicates that some people are disengaged,” Willison explained. “It’s tough to attribute that completely to online dating being the prominent way to meet someone, but the issues, I don’t think, are entirely unrelated.”

  • Dating in the Future

So where is the industry headed? 

While it can be hard to predict the future, Willison believes that AI integration is a certainty for online dating brands. For one, these platforms may start to leverage AI avatars. According to Willison, users would correspond with an AI, which would gather information and connect like-minded users. “Bumble, Hinge, and Tinder have already implemented AI by offering profile improvements, providing suggestions on pictures, helping develop descriptions, and prompting conversation starters. Having an AI avatar would be the next transformative thing,” he said. Although this may seem untraditional, Willison believes that it could streamline the dating process, allowing users to find more compatible matches without having to wade through dozens of profiles manually. 

Given the personal nature of the industry, is there cause for concern to rely on AI? Willison isn’t too worried about the short-term. “People still crave human connection. I think dating will always have a place,” Willison said. “It is a possibility that we see U.S. and European markets start going in the direction of Japan and South Korea, where people drop out of the ecosystem. But I don’t think that is deterministic,” he added. Willison predicts that the dips in participation from users in these countries could also change. “I don’t think that is eternal either. Activity could turn around.” 

The M Science Difference

How will M Science stay at the forefront of online dating industry insights?

Willison points to granular and clear data presented by M Science. “From our digital purchase data, we’re seeing all the transactions that a group of these high-quality and consistent users across the U.S. and Europe are making within the apps, iOS, and Google Play store,” Willison said. “We don’t only see someone spending on Tinder, Hinge or Bumble. We can view the specific services that they’re purchasing, and we can observe the length of that subscription.” 

This visibility informs company performance, as the data reveals which aspects are driving strengths, weaknesses, revenues per payer, and more. According to Willison, this insight is key to contextualizing the brands. “You really need this level of granularity to model to the top-line figure because revenue recognition is important,” he said. Match Group and Bumble record revenue based on their subscription durations. In other words, if a user purchases a one-month or six-month subscription, the revenue is going to be recognized by these companies over time, rather than all at once. “If you’re using any other data source, one that does not maintain product-level detail, you cannot properly amortize spend for different users or different plans. You need that to properly evaluate activity in accordance with how online dating companies report revenue, payers, and such,” Willison explained. 

M Science provides written research reports into Match Group (MTCH) and Bumble (BMBL). We publish a monthly Online Dating Industry Report, which displays year-over-year female payers, Tinder and Hinge domestic revenues, dollar market share, subscriber mix, first-time payers, international in-app bookings, product mix, churn, and more. We also monitor online dating industry growth by booking, payers, average order value, revenue per payer, amortized payers, and revenue.

Additionally, our team visualizes near-real time trends in our Online Dating Dashboard. We present digital market metrics, female payer trends, brand unique payers, dating cohorts, U.S. merchant transactions, consumer activity, customer overlap, app user behavior, and app metrics. Our team follows major online dating brands:  Ablo, Azar, Badoo, BLK, Bumble, Chispa, Christian Mingle, Clover, CMB, eHarmony, EliteSingles, Grindr, Growlr, Hakuna, Happn, Hawaya,  Hinge, JDate, JSwipe, League, Lovoo, Meetic, Meetme, Muzmatch, OkCupid, OurTime, Pairs, Plenty of Fish, Skout, Stir, Tagged, Tinder, Upward, and Zoosk.

If you would like to speak with Research Analyst Chandler Willison
or if you want to hear more about our Online Dating coverage, please reach out to us! 

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