Leading concert promoters Live Nation used the gay dating app to advertise the singer’s on-going Rebel Heart tour.
Live Nation employed Facebook’s Atlas ad platform to head the digital marketing campaign, which uses Facebook’s mobile-data tools to understand consumer web-surfing habits.
Atlas placed banner ads and sent out global messages to Grindr users to promote the 2015 tour.
And recently at a speech at Cannes Lions Inspiration Stage, Atlas revealed how successful this was as a marketing channel.
Live Nation SVP of Digital Media Julia Heiser and Facebook’s David Jakubowski revealed that:
“Popular dating app Grindr – a 100% mobile environment with no non-app components – displayed global broadcast messages and banner ads promoting the tour launch and ultimately finished as one of the campaign’s top-performing channels.
“If Live Nation had served those ads using a standard third-party platform instead of Atlas, the final analysis would’ve reported zero tickets sold.”
The executives said at the end of the campaign, Live Nation recorded a 66% increase in purchases from mobile ad recipients, with Grindr playing a key role in the overall success.
Writing in a blog post about the speech, Atlas said: “The consumer shift to mobile and cross-device engagement has completely upended decades of accepted wisdom about our audiences–not only who they are and how best to reach them but the ways in which various media messages can influence an individual’s decision to purchase or ignore.”
They also spoke about the potential for mobile marketing with regards to the concert industry.
Data shows that 41% of music fans played a song on their smartphone last year, 4 in 5 concertgoers have a smartphone, and 93% use it to search for concert tickets.
And yet despite this, 66% will make a purchase on a desktop computer, if they open a Ticketmaster or Live Nation email.
Grindr are expected to continue this successful relationship with musical artists – apparently planning campaigns with Nicki Minaj, Idina Menzel, Ciara, Jessie J and Disclosure.
Other dating apps have recently made partnerships with musicians and record labels – Tinder selling a new album to users, and Match.com appearing in a Mariah Carey music video.
Tinder not only exclusively previewed Jason Derulo’s new video to users on the app, but also offered electronic musician Zedd’s album at a four dollar discount price of $3.99.
The co-founder of Tinder, Sean Rad, recently spoke about these brand partnerships, saying that across the board, 25% of users swipe right to branded profiles.