Last week, we visited Google’s Central St Giles HQ, London, for a WhiteLabelDating.com partner workshop detailing the latest key insights that we’ve gathered on ‘Online Dating in Australia’.
Hosted by WhiteLabelDating.com Operations Director, Matthew Pitt, and Google UK Dating Industry Manager and native Aussie, Yvonne Cheung it was a well attended and insightful event sharing some vital insights and learnings to help WhiteLabelDating.com partners succeed in Australia.
Aussie Insights
- Australia actually has a landmass that’s almost the size of the entire USA yet it has a population of just 22.8m, a little larger than the State of Florida.
- Australia is one of the world’s most urbanised nations, with over 70% of the population living in the 10 largest cities which aids geo-targeting.
- It also has a very strong and stable economy and has not been as affected by the global recession as other countries.
- Yet whilst it is an expensive place to live, salaries are generally higher and so spending is greater… and yes, people will pay more for their dating site subscriptions.
An Established Online Dating Market
As some of the early adopters of online dating, Aussies embraced the trend as far back as 1997, when RSVP first entered the market, appropriately on Valentine’s Day. The industry has continued to grow year on year, but whilst it maintains popularity, online dating culturally still has a certain amount of stigma attached when it comes to publicly admitting you’re taking part. That said, the country is home to an estimated 5.8m singles – that’s 32.9% of all adults – meaning plenty of opportunities to be had.
The Australian dating industry is largely dominated by large, local players some of whom have been established for around ten years. Yet growth in niche dating search queries and a lack of local competition at this level means that a number of our WhiteLabelDating.com partners, who adopted our niche interest or localisation strategy, have succeeded in successfully entering the Australian online dating market.
Key Insight and Learnings
Our partners were given the opportunity to get to grips with a range of exclusive and up-to-the minute Australian online dating insights and statistics to aid their campaign planning. Studies ranged from detailed analysis of search trends from Google internal data; to the impact of smartphone and mobile dating adoption; to the rise of the ‘Baby Boomer’ market; .com vs .com.au domain preferences; to the online dating opportunities presented by various niches and interest sectors.
Finally we revealed that due to our partners’ success in entering this market, the annualised revenues for the WhiteLabelDating.com Australian network are now in excess of AU$10m.
This was a highly informative workshop and we’d like to thank Google for their help, hard-work and hospitality. We’ve had a really high standard of feedback from our WhiteLabelDating.com partners and look forward to a promising year for continued growth and expansion into this market!
If you’d like to find out more about the opportunities available for you in Australia, or would like to put some of our findings into practice to enhance your site, feel free to contact us.
