Business Models

Ok Cupid is an ad-supported website meaning majority of the money they make is from advertisers. In 2012, OkCupid realized that their internal ad-impression was not matching the advertisers, which were lower. After researching they realized it was because of the popularity of ad blockers. Ad blockers are the free web-browser extension that stop ads from appearing on a web page (Kauflin, 2013). The site was losing money so they created a solution. The created a notice that would be placed behind every ad. So when users with an ad blocker visited the site where the white space would be a message. It read "So normally there would be an ad in this spot. But you're using an ad blocker like a boss … Here's a solution: You donate $5 to us once, and we remove all ads from the site forever”. This message caused a spike in the donations. It was enough to make a large dent in the money they were losing from ad blockers. People were willing to pay the site directly with cash (Constine, 2012). 

OkCupid had a very popular article in their website titled Why You Should Never Pay for Online Dating. This article reflects their business model of being a free dating service. After being bought from Match.com (a paid dating site) for 50 million, the article disappeared. Match’s parent company IAC claims that OkCupid can “develop an appetite for the broader feature set and more committed community” and that Match.com can provide them that. Their reason for taking down the article is because they said some of their claims were assumptions (Quigley, 2011). The sale and the pulling of the article represent a shift in their business model.

References:

Constine, J. (2012). OkCupid Asks Ad-Blocker Users to Go Ad-free Forever for $5 with this

Smart, Funny Banner. techcrunch. 

Kauflin, J. (2013). OKCupid Asks Customers to Help Remove Ads from Site. Entrepreneur.

Quigley, R, (2011). OKCupid Pulls Article About “Why You Should Never Pay for Online Dating”

in Wake of Match.com Sale. The Mary Sue.