Imagine the reach of a YouTube masthead advertisement. Imagine the advertisement now appearing directly on a mobile phone user’s lock screen. It is not necessary for the user to unlock the phone, swipe away any notifications, go to the app drawer, scroll down to Y to find YouTube, press on it, and then view a brand’s advertisement. Instead, the user only needs to lift their phone to start receiving ads. There were none. That is the sales argument that Glance, a platform for lock screens, is making to companies.
Advertising that is entirely immersive and without friction. In India, Glance boasts 180 million active users and is pre-installed on smartphones from Xiaomi, POCO, Motorola, Samsung, Oppo, Realme, and Vivo. Glance, a division of the ad-tech company InMobi, achieved unicorn status in December 2020. By the end of this year, it is scheduled to debut in the US and Latin America. Currently, the platform may be found in Indonesia and India. The company wants to reach a billion users within the next two to three years after the launch in the US and Latin America. It’s interesting to note that in the US, Glance won’t feature adverts on the lock screen. “Our commitment to consumers is that you will never pick up your phone to see an ad on the lock screen itself,” the firm stated in a statement.
The growth that Glances is aiming for is sole because it comes pre-loaded on Android mobile devices. Industry insiders call this a stroke of genius by Glance. This eliminates the need for Glance to invest money in customer acquisition and to work hard to keep users. IDC AVP and tech analyst Navkendar Singh note that “Like Glance, several app developers pre-burn their software into cellphones. Unlike such apps, Glance does not require a call to action from consumers. Although some smartphone users might find a lock screen app and one that shows advertising invasive, Singh claims that consumers do not. They think the information is current. Abhay Singhal, a co-founder, deems Glance a category killer. Glance claims to be on 80% of recently released Android handsets as a result of partnerships with handset producers.
Monetising a glance – According to Vasuta Agarwal, senior vice president, and MD, APAC, InMobi, Glance offers a variety of ad formats that marketers may use to accomplish various objectives. For example, when launching a new show or product, brands can use our lock screen takeover to get the attention of a sizable user base. It is comparable to a newspaper front page ad, she claims. With Glance, companies from the auto, food delivery, and video streaming industries have teamed up to offer new products.
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