Dating Apps Keep Chasing Gen Z. What About 40+?

The dating industry has spent years trying to crack Gen Z. Maybe it has been looking in the wrong direction….

At last week’s GDI Conference in London, ParshipMeet Group CEO Matthew Gain had a fairly simple message.” While eharmony and Parship were busy chasing younger users, older daters kept turning up. Chasing Gen Z, Matthew said, had taken its toll. In mid-2025, the company began redeveloping its products around 40+ daters.

The shift goes beyond advertising. ParshipMeet is moving away from commoditised swiping and slowing the process down. Instead of presenting another stack of faces to swipe through, the focus is on one profile at a time. Parship works with psychologists, while AI is being used to improve matching and safety. The idea is to create a safe place for people willing to be brave enough to start dating again in midlife.

ParshipMeet has shifted much of its advertising budget to influencer marketing and reduced prices after previously raising them to offset falling revenue. Matthew said the changes are beginning to show results: sales increased 5% at Parship and 25% at eharmony, while conversion rose 23% and 41% respectively. Likes, retention and renewal rates also improved, with further benefits expected in the H2 of 2026.

Carsten Böltz, CEO of Online Personals Group, offered another reminder that there is plenty of business beyond the industry’s Gen Z obsession. He has worked in online dating for 21 years. His group is profitable, and operates C-Date, be2, Academic Singles, Singles50 and several other brands. They all run on one platform, allowing new features to be introduced across the portfolio. The company also quietly acquired eDarling from Spark Networks this year.

Carsten revisited the M&A predictions he made at the IDEA Summit in Paris in 2022. He expected few major private equity deals, selective acquisitions by strategic buyers and no significant wave of dating companies merging with each other.

The lesson? The industry spends a lot of time talking about how to attract Gen Z, how Gen Z dates and why Gen Z doesn’t behave like previous generations. Matthew’s experience suggests that chasing a new audience can mean losing sight of the one already using your product.