Grindr’s move into the world of digital media was to help generate more advertising revenue, the company said recently.
Online publication Into was released in beta this March, serving up a variety of cultural content ranging from short films about gay culture to lists about queer TV shows and opinion articles from guest influencers.
And according to Michele Tobin, Grindr’s VP of brand partnerships and advertising, during its first beta month, the platform attracted over 2m unique users.
Part of the strategy behind the site was to give brands a new place to advertise, Tobin told AdExchanger in a recent interview: “We hear from brands that know their audience is on Grindr, but simply don’t advertise within any sort of dating environment.
“This is very much a brand-safe destination, and offers opportunities for a broader swath of advertisers to reach the LGBTQ audience.”
The website is officially launching this week, and Grindr hopes its content strategy of taking a “global approach with localised context” will help to serve both the media platform and the dating app.
In March, Landis Smithers, Creative Director of Grindr said: “When you have creators of all kinds, from artists to social activists to cultural influencers, we are able to curate everything from real time accounts of where to go in cities around the world, to information on the hottest trends from people creating them, to first person accounts of events impacting the LGBTQ world every day.
Earlier this year it was revealed that Chinese gaming company Beijing Kunlun Tech was planning to buy out the rest of Grindr, having previously bought a 61.5% stake in Grindr for $93m in 2016.
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