Dating app Tinder is proving that people really do love brands — enough to “swipe right” to match with them 20% of the time, according to Tinder co-founder Sean Rad. Rad is courting advertisers at the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity this week as the company continues to build out its ad offerings, Advertising Weekreports.
So far, Tinder has let brands create profiles on the app just as a human user would, paying to have it show up in users’ feed of potential suitors they endorse by swiping right, or reject by swiping left. Bud Light, the movie Spy, and Orbitz are among the earliest to advertise on the app.
“Users can match with these brands when they swipe right, and what we’ve seen sort of consistently when we’ve done this is an over 20% swipe right rate, which is amazing engagement,” Rad told Advertising Week.
Tinder also recently introduced another revenue source: Tinder Plus, a paid tier that offers features like the ability to “undo” swipes and to temporarily match with users in a different part of the world.
But the company also seems to have additional plans for its ad products, namely something to do with swiping up, a variant on Tinder’s signature side-swiping user interface. Rad revealed that the company is in the process of filing a patent for the swiping interface in any direction — including up/down — though he avoided answering questions as to what these new directions will be used for.
