Tinder · B2C · swipe dating app
Show ads to free users to cover their cost
Small share of revenue; ads worth far less than a subscriber
Mixedupsell-expansion
What they did
Free Tinder users see ads; an ad impression is orders of magnitude less valuable than a subscriber, so it fills gaps rather than driving the business. Eiting adds that across apps he talks to, ads are usually 10-20% of revenue and help subsidize free users.
What happened
Small part of Tinder revenue.
- Stage
- scale
In their words
Sub Club by RevenueCat · How Tinder Captures More Value With Tiered Pricing and Consumables — Ravi Mehta“It's just the numbers in terms of the value of an ad impression versus the value of someone subscribing to Tinder is such a huge difference in terms of order of magnitude.”
Related topics
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New tactics from the week's founder interviews, each linked to where it was said.
More from Tinder
All 22 Tinder tactics- Put a toggle in the top bar that opens a new paid tierAbout $50M in revenue from one small A/B test
- Use a prediction model to show each user just the one plan they'll likely buyEstimated multimillion-dollar yearly revenue gain in an A/B test
- Raise the price of the standalone feature so it stops stealing subscriptionsFewer lost subscriptions, slightly lower conversion, higher total revenue
- Price the 7-day feature pass the same as a 7-day subscription, shown side by sideLess cannibalization and more revenue, but still not good enough
- Give each paid feature its own paywall and check its sales every morningShowed 2-3 features drive most new subs; weak ones were made free
- Sell the travel feature on its own for 1 day, 3 days or a weekConversion jumped, but it pulled buyers away from the cheapest subscription
More from this episode
- Tinder: Offer three subscription levels and sell extra boosts on topFormer CPO calls it one of the best ways to price consumer apps; no revenue split given
- Tinder: Keep dating free for most users so there are plenty of people to match85-90% never pay; the 10-15% who do fund the business
- Tinder: Interview users spending $100-250 a month, then build a top plan for themLed to Tinder Platinum; no results shared
- Tinder: Test many prices for each plan and add-on, country by countryHundreds of price SKUs live at once; no test results shared
- Tinder: Sell a paid 'super like' that stands out from a normal likeSuper Likes are 3x more likely to get a match
- Tinder: Let people start swiping in two minutes using Facebook login and photosOnboarding cut from ~20 minutes to under 2; brought younger people into online dating
- Sesame Care: Replace a 3-screen checkout with a 20-question intake before paymentConversion up (host says 40%); 99%+ of people answer each next question
- TripAdvisor: Sort hotels by each traveler's past behavior without calling it 'just for you'Unlabelled version converted better; labelling it 'just for you' dropped conversion
- Start at $20-30 a month; if nobody pays, fix the product, not the price
- Wispr Flow: Give a short free trial that builds a daily habit, then chargeGuest converted without hesitation; a free-tier rival he uses daily never got paid
- Sell live classes, Zoom sessions and week-long intensives to your most engaged usersRevenue almost doubled; live offers now half of revenue
- Calm: Play rain sounds the moment the app opens, and in 15-second ads
- TripAdvisor: Set quarterly goals as a short why, 3-5 commitments, and a task listGuest says teams that adopted it found it works better than OKRs; no numbers