Tinder has partnered with Facebook to let advertisers buy ads on Tinder programmatically.
The move was revealed in the Match Group’s Q4 earnings call, after the dating giant posted another strong set of quarterly results.
The company announced it had partnered with Facebook’s Audience Network to let advertisers buy and place ads on the dating product.
In an investor presentation, Tinder revealed it had signed the third party ad deal with Facebook, which will let the company “serve ads in excess of our direct sales efforts”.
The Match Group CEO Greg Blatt said: “As we roll in Facebook we’re going to be able to start providing inventory on top of that”.
In the earnings call, Blatt said the partnership was another “important step” in the Match Group’s “non-urgent drive to build this advertising business.”
The CEO said: “It has taken second place to the direct business with good reason, but we are slowly and steadily building it and we think it has real opportunity to contribute down the road.”
The public company said the partnership should be integrated and launched in the second quarter of 2017.
When it comes into place, targeted in-app ads from Facebook’s network of advertisers will appear on Tinder.
If advertisers would prefer not to have their ads shown on dating apps like Tinder, they can choose to opt-out of the category.
In terms of how many ads will appear on Tinder, Blatt said: “I think in our current state of the direct sales business, the app load and frequency is not an issue, we haven’t focused on it at all.
“I think one of the first think we’re going to do when we plug in Facebook is start to test frequency because then suddenly we can turn on as much volume as we want and I think that by the end of Q2, I’m going to be able to answer that question with some precision.
“Right now it’s literally all guesswork. I mean it’s not a relevant number right now. The inventory level is so small, but Facebook gives us the ability to hit any ad load we want and I think Q2 we are going to spend a fair amount of time testing that to try and find what our optimal level is.”
In the Q4 results, the Match Group posted a 22% increase in dating revenue, as Tinder closed out the year with 1.7m paying subscribers, more than doubling the previous year’s total of 0.8m.
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