Printed personal
ads found in newspapers and
various magazines and tabloids
USED TO account for a
significant portion of the
dating services market. They’re
cheap, and they do work in many
cases, with success rates
probably on a par with more
costly dating services. An
estimated 5% of a growing
singles population uses voice
personals. However, this segment
of the dating services market,
like most others, has been hurt
by the growing popularity of
dating websites online, and is
on the decline.
Ten years ago,
virtually every alternative
weekly and high circulation
daily, as well as scores of
smaller papers, participated in
what’s been called the “virtual
bar scene”. No longer. Most
papers don’t even cover their
expenses in this area. The
papers that still run personals
do it mainly as a reader
service, not a profit generator.
Management at
Microvoice Applications, a firm
that used to compete in the
radio station datelines
business, reports that the
printed personal ads market for
newspapers is down about 85%
from six years ago, and that
most papers are dumping their
personals sections.
It wasn’t until
1989 that people began to link
voice response with personal
ads. This is when MCI
introduced an interactive
service. All 900 numbers call
volume took off in the
mid-1980s. Around 1980 was the
very beginning of passive 900
numbers.
Just how big
this segment of the market is up
for debate. According to a 1992
article in the Detroit Free
Press, some 1,300 weekly,
monthly and daily publications
then were running personal ads,
with the total expected to jump
to 2,000 by 1993. In 2002, there
were 1,457 total morning and
evening daily newspapers in the
country.
Marketdata
analysts tried to obtain
information on how many U.S.
newspapers now run print
personals, versus 5-10 years
ago, but were unsuccessful. We
contacted the industry’s two
main trade groups: The National
Newspaper Association and the
Newspaper Association of America
(www.naa.org).
Both said that they have never
seen any statistics or research
on this area. It is simply not
tracked by anyone.
How
Print Personals Operate
Compared to other
dating services, where fees can
run into the thousands, print
ads are a bargain. Many
newspapers offer all or a
portion of personal ads free.
But there’s usually a catch:
Newspapers get singles coming
and going by charging both
advertisers and ad
respondents as much as $1.98
per minute to tap into
sophisticated, 900 number voice
mail systems to collect or place
their responses.
Typically, a
consumer places a free
classified ad, is assigned a
voice mailbox number, records a
greeting and then, by dialing a
900 number, pays anywhere from
$0.99 to $1.99 a minute to
listen to his or her “mail” -
responses to the ads. And the
people who phone the 900 number
to leave such mail also pay the
.99 to $1.99 charge. Ads run
for two weeks on average before
being replaced by the next
crop. About 85% percent of
users are repeat customers.
Research shows
that the average call length for
a 900 number is about 5.5
minutes—making it an expenditure
worth about $10-12 per person.
Based on
interviews Marketdata performed
with the leading voice response
service bureaus, there are three
entities that share this 900
number revenue:
-
the long
distance phone company
(AT&T, MCI, Sprint, etc.)
-
the newspaper
-
the voicemail
system provider
After the phone
company takes its cut, it seems
as if the average newspaper gets
60-80% of the call revenue, and
the service bureaus get 20-40%.
The newspaper’s share will vary,
depending on the size of the
market they serve, the length of
the contract, and the market
served.
Unlike other
classified ads, the ad and voice
greeting for personals is
generally free for the
advertiser to place—there is
usually no charge to print
the personal, just to respond to
it. Most newspapers offer free
once-a-week message retrieval,
and you pay if you want to
retrieve your messages more
often. In a minority of cases,
the advertiser might pay for an
ad if the magazine handles the
process in-house.
Fifty or 60
responses from a one-time ad in
a major Sunday newspaper is
common, and some ads generate as
many as 200 replies. (Assuming
that the person responds to half
of those 50 responses they get,
for only one minute apiece, that
would mean total the total
amount spent by one person would
be about $50.)
The problem with
personal ads today, say industry
insiders, is that there isn’t
enough opportunity to adequately
describe oneself in just 30
words, which is the limit of
most voicemail systems. Also,
people who advertise in the
personals just don’t tell the
truth (about their height,
weight, marital status, etc.).
They lie to get more response.
Responders waste a lot of time
calling and meeting unsuitable
matches. Furthermore, there’s no
screening process—people
responding have to do it
themselves, which is very time
consuming. And, you can’t put a
photo of yourself on a voicemail
system