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Tinder is the hottest company in Barry Diller’s portfolio. But the free dating app doesn’t generate any revenue for Diller’s IAC conglomerate.
That will change this year, IAC executives said today during the company’s earnings call. IAC doesn’t want or need to turn Tinder into a giant money-maker yet, but it will begin experimenting with monetization ideas “soon,” said Greg Blatt, who runs IAC’s Match dating business, along with Tinder and smaller properties.
One obvious idea, Blatt told analysts today, would be to run ads on the service. “The nature of the Tinder user experience presents itself with real opportunities for native advertising that certain of our other products don’t,” he said.
In fact, Tinder users have already seen ads — it’s just that IAC didn’t sell them. Earlier this year Fox ran fake profiles on the app to promote “The Mindy Project”; USA Network has done the same.
Blatt wouldn’t disclose how many users Tinder has, but told analysts it was growing very fast. IAC also wouldn’t specify its exact ownership stake in the company, but did say that Tinder was now completely owned by IAC and Tinder executives, led by CEO Sean Rad. Earlier this month IAC confirmed that it had purchased Tinder shares owned by investor Chamath Palihapitiya.
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
