Brief:

• HBO Max, WarnerMedia's new video streaming service, is celebrating last week's launch with a giveaway on Bumble, per an announcement the women-first dating app shared with Mobile Marketer. The streaming platform is offering a preview of the series "Love Life" and a $20 gift card for food delivery to have a virtual date while stuck at home during the coronavirus pandemic.
• Bumble users must find the "Love Life" profile card with actress Anna Kendrick in the app and match with it for more details on how to win a virtual date. Bumble and HBO Max will choose 1,000 winners to receive the credit for food delivery and the free preview of the show.
• More than 150,000 Bumble users have updated their dating profiles to note that they're quarantining during the pandemic. More than 900,000 users have used a "virtual dating" badge in the app to indicate they're willing to have a date by video chat, per Bumble.

Insight:

HBO Max and Bumble's giveaway aims to transform the traditional "dinner and a movie" date into a virtual experience for people who can't go out to restaurants and theaters during lockdowns. While many cities and states are lifting those restrictions, consumers will likely maintain their reliance on home-based digital entertainment and food-delivery services until more theaters and restaurants are allowed to welcome patrons indoors. As HBO Max seeks to stand out in an increasingly crowded field for video streaming services, the contest can help to connect with audiences who are looking for movies and shows to watch while in isolation.

Thanks to parent company WarnerMedia, HBO Max has considerable financial resources to promote its service, which has an exclusive library of hit shows like "Game of Thrones" and "Friends." The service is more likely to appeal to viewers who watch programming on their connected TVs (CTVs) rather than mobile devices, similar to Netflix. Seventy percent of Netflix's streaming video is watched on a connected TV, although about 30% of its first-time users sign up through a mobile device, Recode reported.

That makes mobile devices a significant marketing channel for streaming services like HBO Max, whose recent launch follows the rollout of paid services like Disney+ and Apple TV+ in the past year. The field will get more crowded when NBCUniversal's Peacock, which will have an ad-free version for $10 a month, launches on July 15.

For Bumble, the collaboration with HBO Max is another sign of how the pandemic has disrupted its efforts to bring people together on dates. The startup, which gives women the ability to initiate contact with prospective dates, last month collaborated with home-sharing startup Airbnb on a series of virtual first dates that couples can share while stuck at home. As lockdowns went into effect, Bumble rolled out "virtual dating tools" that let people communicate without meeting in person. Those tools let Bumble users add a "virtual date badge" to their user profiles to indicate they're available for a video chat, and meet with people anywhere in the U.S. instead of its typical 100-mile radius.