Millions of Americans are spending big bucks for online dating services. And with Valentine's Day a week away, Slice Intelligence released new data on the online dating market that reveals Tinder's buying population is the fastest growing amongst all internet dating services. Tinder's premium swipers increased 71 percent in 2016 compared to 2015, which dwarfs the overall paid member growth of nine percent for all other dating services.
Match is the dominant dating platform
While the growing number of Tinder Plus users is impressive, Match still leads in terms of overall sales. Paying Match.com members generated 30 percent of all the revenue in the online dating market last year. Tinder holds the second place slot accumulating slightly under a quarter of all 2016's e-dating dollars– nothing to swipe left at. eHarmony also has a large footprint with online spending.
Online daters are spending the most with eHarmony and Match.com
One reason Match and eHarmony are as lucrative is because their premium users spend the most. eHarmony paid users spend the most and shell out $129 looking for love in 2016. Match premium members spend $88 annually, while Tinder's paying population spent only $45 for "Super Likes" and unlimited swipes.
Swipe west, young man
Tinder is the dominant online dating service for many western states, particularly California. Seven of the 10 states where Tinder has the highest share of the dating market are west of the Mississippi.
Mature women seek eHarmony and Match, while nearly a quarter of Tinder users are men 51 and older
Age and demographic data varies from dating service to dating service. On eHarmony and Match.com, women accounted for the majority of 2016 revenue. A surprisingly high percentage of that revenue – 23 percent on eHarmony – comes from women 51 and over.
Meanwhile, OkCupid and Tinder are more male-dominated platforms. Almost 81 percent of Tinder's revenue in 2016 was driven by male users, with a higher proportion from males older than 40 of any other service.
About this data
With a panel of over 4.4 million online shoppers, Slice Intelligence gives the most detailed, and accurate digital commerce data available, and is reported daily.
Slice Intelligence is the only service to measure digital commerce directly from the consumer, across all retailers, at the item level, and over time. Our retailer-independent methodology precisely measures commerce as it happens. By extracting detailed information from hundreds of millions of aggregated and anonymized e-receipts, Slice can map the entire Purchase Graph, connecting each and every consumer to all their purchases.
Slice gets its data from e-receipts – not a browser, app or software installed by the end-user – so its measurement reflects comprehensive shopping behavior across multiple devices, over time which are key in an increasingly omnichannel retail world. Slice Intelligence is the exclusive e-commerce data provider for the NPD’s Checkout Tracking e-commerce service.