Hinge Is Bucking Dating App Burnout With Marketing That Caters to Gen Z

A couple sits side-by-side in a diner booth, recounting how they met. Strangely enough, they were neighbors growing up—“I had a hundred chances to say hi to him,” the woman recalls—yet they didn’t meet until matching on Hinge.

While the scene could be lifted from a romantic comedy, its a true story shared by the dating app in its latest campaign, “It’s Funny We Met on Hinge.” Such unexpected love stories—with all their “twists and turns,” per chief marketing officer and newly appointed president Jackie Jantos—are evidently resonating with audiences in the era of dating app fatigue. In its 2024 earnings call, Hinge owner Match Group credited the campaign for attracting new users, especially women.

Hinge’s strategy to reach Gen Z and “intentional daters,” as Jantos calls them, is helping woo people to the app as evidence mounts that dating apps are turning off many consumers. Over the past decade, dating app usage has nearly halved, according to a 2024 Forbes Health and OnePoll survey which found that users spend an average of 51 minutes per day on dating apps, compared to 100 minutes daily 10 years ago.

However, Hinge’s 2024 revenue rise of 39% outpaced growth at its owner, which saw a 3% revenue increase, and of another brand in the Match portfolio, Tinder, which posted flat revenues in 2024. Match, the world’s largest dating apps company, is under pressure to turn around the business after forecasting a 3% to 5% revenue drop in the first quarter of this year. It appointed Zillow co-founder Spencer Rascoff as new CEO in February.

Meanwhile, rival Bumble’s 2024 revenue fell by 4.4%, and its founder Whitney Wolfe Herd is returning as CEO this month to help reverse its fortunes.

As of October 2024, Hinge became the second most downloaded dating app in the U.S. for the first time and is the number one most downloaded dating app in 10 countries including France and the U.K., per research firm Sensor Tower and Match’s 2024 earnings report. This global growth shows it is “absolutely bucking the trend [of dating app fatigue],” Jantos told ADWEEK.

Notably, Hinge is outperforming while investing less in advertising than its competitors. Tinder and Bumble far outspent Hinge in U.S. advertising last year, according to data from marketing intelligence platform MediaRadar.

“While we’re outspent by competitors, we’re still the fastest-growing dating app because we prioritize being genuinely useful and in tune with daters’ needs,” Jantos said. “When you build your strategy around real user experiences and helping people find meaningful connections, you don’t need the biggest budget to make the biggest impact.”

As Hinge’s global growth ambitions continue into this year—it plans to roll out into Latin America, first with Mexico in the third quarter and Brazil in the fourth quarter of 2025—Gen Z, or “the next generation of daters,” will remain the brand’s “primary focus,” said Jantos.