Highfloor
Guide · Spoke

Dating app advertising for the going-out audience

By Highfloor Media
Last updated
vertical

Dating apps have a targeting problem that bar TV solves. The user the app wants is the user already going out to meet people — sitting in a bar on a Thursday, Friday, or Saturday night. Programmatic targets behavior on a phone; bar TV targets behavior in a venue. The combination plus rideshare for the post-night-out moment is the strongest stack.

The targeting fit

Dating apps want the user who's actually going out to meet people. That user is sitting in a dense neighborhood gastropub, cocktail bar, or lounge-style restaurant in an entertainment corridor on a Thursday-Saturday primetime daypart. Bar TV reaches that user in venue. Programmatic catches them on their phone earlier in the day. Rideshare hits them post-venue when they're reflecting on who they did or didn't meet.

Venue selection for dating apps

The venues that index for dating apps aren't generic top-fifty bars. They're the dense neighborhood gastropubs and cocktail bars in entertainment corridors where the target demographic actually goes to meet people. Highfloor builds dating-app venue lists against the metro's actual social geography rather than a default sports-bar list.

Creative tone

Dating-app creative is unusual in this channel — short, brand-forward, built around tone rather than offer. The conversion isn't a ticket sale; it's an app install or profile creation, often days later on the user's phone on a different night.

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

Should I run dating ads during sports primetime?

Usually no — sports primetime venue audience composition skews against the dating-app target demographic. Pre-prime weekend and Thursday-Saturday primetime in dating-and-social-indexing venues outperforms.

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