Dating apps Bumble and Hinge attracted more downloads worldwide in 2021 than the previous two years. Meanwhile, Tinder outpaced them both by at least 54 million downloads—albeit 8 million fewer downloads than its lead in 2020.

Shake Shack is even partnering with DoorDash to create a limited-time dating site focused on how spicy users like their food. Brands are eager to digitally engage all those with love on the brain because user data relating to romance is highly valuable. Dating app profiles, for example, provide insight to a user’s location, gender, hobbies, media interests, and more.

App usage is strong, but advertisers need to rethink their strategies, thanks to ad tracking and measurement changes.

Dating apps also followed surprising patterns. Many dating app users pivoted fairly quickly to a new reality. “We did see dating apps were surprisingly resilient during the pandemic,” Sydow said. "That was really interesting from the perspectives of both weekly active users and time spent.”. Analyst Take.

Dating apps are seeing an influx of new users as many continue to shelter in place. This year, we forecast there will be 26.6 million smartphone dating app users, according to our latest estimates. That’s an 18.4% increase from 2019.

The pandemic accelerated mobile trends by years, and these changes should stick even as the pandemic wanes. Many people were forced to use apps for food delivery, finance, fitness, and shopping, and they’ve become accustomed to these new behaviors. Even app categories that were hurt during the pandemic, such as travel or dating apps, have been resilient. People have acclimated to new forms of mobile shopping and activities, and they’ll be more willing to try mobile interfaces for other activities going forward.

On today's episode, we discuss what "going back to the office" may actually mean, the dawn of “tiered-access journalism,” video safe havens for brands, possible surges in travel plans, Facebook's new video speed dating app called Sparked, why the Rubik's Cube was invented, and more. Tune in to listen to the discussion with eMarketer principal analysts Jillian Ryan and Jeremy Goldman, and analyst at Insider Intelligence Blake Droesch.

Apps soar, browsers fade: Mobile devotees are using apps more than browsers. The popularity of games, podcasts, and social media is influencing this trend, but consumers are also using apps for activities such as shopping, dating, travel, and fitness.

The outage also had a serious impact on Delta flights, Disney theme parks (guests could not check in online), day traders (Robinhood and Coinbase were offline), as well as dating app Tinder. A bad software update in June took out content delivery network Fastly and resulted in a global outage that took out CNN, The New York Times, Bloomberg, and Reddit.

We recently sat down with Hank Izzo, vice president of marketing at Mars Wrigley US, who spoke about Sweet ReTREAT (the brand’s Valentine’s Day pop-up in New York City), why the company teamed up with dating app Bumble on this activation, and how its efforts continually evolve as the holiday shifts from romance to celebration. This is the third year you're doing a pop-up around Valentine’s Day.

eMarketer principal analyst Mark Dolliver and vice president of research Jennifer Pearson discuss the wonderful world of online dating. Who's on which platforms? What do people like and dislike about it? They then talk about Valentine's Day spending, "OK Boomer" age discrimination and the link between smartphones and mental health.

We recently spoke with Pittson about creating buzz for a brand, gaining retail distribution, Quip's brief stint on dating apps, and more. Why do you think Quip has been successful? One of the first things that comes to mind for me is the product itself—the hero product of the electric toothbrush being genuinely category disrupting. Quip wasn't a pure marketing or brand play.