The company will focus on four areas of improvement, working to drive more engagement, enhance retention, strengthen performance and optimize monetization.
According to Perrette, three-quarters of HBO Max’s viewership comes from the home screen only, whereas on Discovery+, the majority of engagement comes from areas deeper in the app. As a result, the company will use Discovery+’s learnings to drive further engagement on Max, including a new navigation menu at the top.
That also involves genre hubs and a new shortcut to save content to watch later. In addition, user profiles will have “highly differentiated” experiences, heavily leaning on machine learning. And for the first time, watch-next recommendations will appear and a default kids profile with parental controls will automatically launch.
To reduce involuntary churn, Max will have fail-payment notifications through on and off-product messages, including in-app messages on connected TVs for the first time.
Connected TV sign-in processes have been simplified with two new features, and app start times and video start times are expected to be 20 to 30 times faster. Marketing teams can now make pricing or promotional teams within a day, a process that would have taken weeks previously.
The ad-lite offering will launch with a “full suite” of ad products built on the company’s own tech stack, which Perrette promised marketers would hear more about during the upfront.
Most users will automatically be updated to the Max app when the product launches on May 23. Usernames and passwords will carry over automatically, along with profiles, watch histories and billing.
Solo Discovery+ subscribers will be unaffected by the changes to Max. Perrette said the company would offer “various opportunities” to try out the streamer, but Warner Bros. Discovery doesn’t want to leave any paying subscribers behind.
More product, same price
The ad-lite and ad-free tiers will remain the same price, at $9.99 and $15.99 per month, respectively. But on May 23, a new offering, Max Ultimate Ad Free, will be made available for $19.99 per month. This includes four concurrent streams, 4K UHD resolution and up to 100 offline downloads.
Leading up to launch, the service is debuting its “biggest marketing campaign ever,” according to Perrette. It will run across all types of media, ramping up as it gets closer to the May unveiling.
