Dating app Tinder was wooing brands at Cannes, and it says that one in five of its users are engaging with brands on its app.
Tinder has become a modern dating phenomenon, with the iconic ‘swipe right’ app responsible for billions of potential love matches across the globe.
Sean Rad, co-founder of Tinder was at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity to help the company make its first big push into the ad world, an environment Tinder is only just becoming acquainted with.
“We have what we call Promoted Profiles, so brands can create profiles in Tinder, and we promote them,” Rad said, during an interview with Ad Week after his first public talk in Cannes on Sunday. “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 percent swipe right rate, which is amazing engagement.”
He said that when early advertisers like Bud Light or the movie Spy post profiles, more than 1 in 5 Tinder users swipe right to match with them and open the way for the ability to share more content with consumers.
Rad said Tinder ads work best when they’re sharing exclusive content and offers. There are also video ads, which Bud Light and Orbitz have bought, and the completion rate on them is “leaps above” rival mobile video ad offerings, Rad said.
Rad said Tinder is in the process of patenting the swipe right, too. “We’re filing to get a patent on basically swiping in any direction to perform an action, which covers swiping right or left, up or down, any direction.”
Asked whether Tinder would introduce “swipe up,” and what for, Rad avoided answering, but it’s clear he has ideas in mind for more swiping and more advertising. While there’s no swipe-up feature today, Rad said, “there might be a reason” for one in the future.
The Tinder co-founder, also former CEO, was at Cannes holding talks with digital marketing companies like SapientNitro.