United Kingdom

MarketingWeek is reporting that OgilvyOne won the marketing account for eHarmony. I am unsure if this is the entire marketing account for eHarmony or just the United Kingdom part. eHarmony was reported to open a UK specific dating service in June (see story) but that appears to be less and less likely as there is just over a week left this month. Hopefully we will see it by summer's end. I did notice that the domain eHarmony.co.uk is registered but it currently just reroutes you to the eHarmony US site.

For more information on eHarmony, please read our review.

IT News mentions that research by Parship, a large dating service in Europe has found that more and more singles in the United Kingdom are looking towards the rest of Europe for finding love. Of Britain’s 15 million single people, 20 percent or 3 million would consider a serious long distance relationship. This is 3 times more singles considering a long distance relationship than a year ago. The article goes on to explain that a major reason for this shift of views in the relatively cheap cost of air travel when compared to train tickets in the UK. On average a flight to Europe is 40% cheaper than a return train ticket from London to any other major city in Britain.

Moneyhighstreet.com posted a news item about the costs of dating in Britain. In it they refer to the NS&I Quarterly Savings Survey in which men believe they pay on average 60% more than women on dating in a year. In total British men expect to pay about £12 billion on dating this year with woman only spending £4.5 billion. This translates to about £50 per date for men and close to £30 for woman.

Across the pond, I think these statistics hold true here in North America. Most dating men I know spend about $100 on a typical date. This includes the cab ride, dinner and usually a movie afterwards. Of course, more and more woman are picking up the tab but in most cases it's still the mans job to pay (at least in my age group mid 30's). I wonder if this is different for the 20 somethings?

According to Metro.co.uk 7.8 million people in Britain used internet dating last year. This is up 33% over 2005. With this growth spurt, Mad.co.uk has news that Match.com UK looks to be doubling its £4 million marketing budget from last year to £8 million. This is not surprising since the North American online dating market growth has slowed. Online dating companies now have to think globally and concentrate on the double digit growths of dating services in the European and Chinese markets. This is not easy as it sounds for North American dating services since ads and the dating sites themselves have to be tailored to suit the cultural difference from country to country.

Match.com UK will be powering Freeads.co.uk new dating service. This deal will give Freeads users access to millions of singles already on Match.com and it will offer Match.com access to the million plus monthly unique visitors at Freeads.

Duncan Horton, Freeads.co.uk chief executive, commented:

For us partnering with a company of Match.com's calibre to launch our dating section is a huge coup. Rather than relying on our users to populate this new section for us we are able to hit the ground running by offering them access to the millions of singles already registered on Match.com.

This makes sense to me since it is extremely difficult to get a new dating service off the ground these days with all the competition. There was no mention of the cost for Freeads users but I am assuming it will be the same cost as signing up normally to Match.com UK's dating service.

For more information or you can read our Match Review (match.com).

Oops, I missed this one, sorry UK Daters! According to Netimpreative, yesterday (Sept. 24) was National Dating Day. To celebrate this, DatingDirect.com setup a booth at Waterloo Station, under the clock. This location is apparently a famous place for daters to meet in the UK. This clear booth had Celebrities, single models and DatingDirect.com members inside. The idea is singles who saw the booth can then login to DatingDirect.com to enter in a competition to win a date with anyone in they saw in the booth.

The target audience for this publicity campaign was for male and female singles aged 25 to 35. Will it work? Who knows, I just feel sorry for the people in the booth!