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Budgeting for Communication Tactics: The Refreshing Transparancy of Dating App Advertisement


 

 I was responsible for making the budget as part of the action plan and it was quite challenging. I didn’t realize how much research and money goes into turning just one communication tactic into a reality.

One of the more interesting parts of designing the budget for me was budgeting for the ad Maya designed to be played on three dating apps: Grindr, Tinder, and Bumble, because I really had no idea what goes into creating an animated advertisement or how to advertise on dating apps. It felt shocking that just a one minute long video would cost thousands of dollars to have professionally drawn and animated which could make it potentially very prohibitive for a smaller organization to produce. However, I definitely appreciated how transparent the vendor I focused on was with their pricing scale and available animation options. Many other vendors I researched required you to reach out in order to receive a quote for your project rather than providing an estimate up front based on their previous portfolio.

However, something I found really cool was how transparent the different dating apps were about the cost to run advertisements. For all three of the dating apps we focused on I could set a lifetime/daily/or monthly budget for advertisement and the company will ensure that you never exceed the set budget. This is especially great for public health initiatives because it is a simple process and there are no surprise costs later on. I think this is especially useful for projects and initiatives such as ours which are not run by groups with a big budget or previous advertisement experience. Additionally, if we wanted to increase our budget for the advertisement via Grindr we could have had a representative from the company walk us through the process and oversee it for us. Another great thing about advertising on Bumble or Tinder is that both services use Google Ads for their platforms which means the lifetime budget we set was for advertising on both apps. We didn't have to pay two different fees to advertise on each app.

This was surprising to me because it is so different to other forms of advertisement such as on social media where it is hard to estimate in advance how much it will cost. Advertising on social media is so complicated because it can be charged by per click or interaction your advertisement gets. This is very tricky to budget for in advance especially in the case of public health initiatives where advertisement funds might be low or meant more for a short term advertisement. 


- Holly

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