Mumbai: Founded in 2019, Glance is a consumer technology company that operates digital platforms including Glance, Roposo, and Nostra. Glance’s ’smart lock screen’ inspires consumers to make the most of every moment by surfacing relevant experiences without the need for unlocking their phones, downloading apps, or searching for content. Glance Lock Screen is currently available on over 450 million smartphones worldwide.
The goal for Glance Lock Screen is to reach one billion smartphones by 2025. Glance CMO Bikash Chowdhury said that the company launched in 2019. Now it has 1500 employees and is present in several countries besides India including the US, Japan, Brazil, Indonesia, Thailand and Mexico. Four in five Android devices shipped in India have Glance. The aim is to offer an experience that is an extension of the smartphone. Before Glance launches in a market the aim is to see how dominant Android is in a market. The market has to be large. “Size matters.” The third thing that it considers is strength of the partnership.
He noted that before Glance launched people used the Lock Screen to look at things like time, the weather, notifications. Glance’s aim is to bring in information and delight he explains. He clarified that Glance is not an app. It has to be pre-installed in a phone. If it is not then a user cannot access Glance.
He explains that there are three focus areas. The first is fresh which means that the content offered has to be fresh. The second area is to be simple. The third area is premium content. So user generated content is not present on the platform.
When it comes to technology the four focus areas are scale, Gen AI, personalisation and deep tech. He noted that the company was using Gen AI early on before many people were aware of it. Content has to be delivered in less than 200 milliseconds. The company uses Large Language Models for relevant content creation and curation. There is an editorial team of around 250 people who ensure that nothing controversial goes up. He added that 8-10 per cent of content that goes up is advertorial but it is marked as being sponsored content and the companies have to adhere to partner guidelines.
Speaking to Medianews4u.com InMobi Group Chief Business Officer Vasuta Agarwal said that the company is continuing to push and look at newer markets where it can launch in. Another area is to improve and get more user engagement and time spent. That has to be grown as a metric. The user base and the time they spent has to be grown. This then should lead to better ad revenue. “User base growth happens through partnerships with OEMs and carriers. We look at who the right partners are to work with as we grow in some of these markets. A lot could be existing partners. There could also be newer partners especially in the carrier and telco space. We have to see which partnerships we work on and how do we use that to expand the user base.”
She mentioned that to grow user engagement and time spent a lot of work is done on the content side. “How do we produce better content at scale which is where the role of Generative AI comes in. We look at creating different formats like text to video. A lot of Generative AI work will happen in the co9ntent creation, content localisation space. All of that should help us bring in the user engagement side of things. We have five genres of content – News, Sports, Gaming, Live and Shopping. We continue to look at partnerships in news, sports and gaming to see which makes sense.”
Gaming she said has a lot of potential. Users spend time there. India is the second largest market in terms of game app downloads. The company partners with gaming developers and bring their games on Glance. Game discovery happens and it is an app less environment. Users can play in an offline mode also. Gaming companies like Bravestars Studio and Inspired Square have partnered with Glance Lock Screen.
On the revenue side the aim is bring in more advertisers on the platform and create awareness about Glance. Right now the company works with 300 advertisers. Shopping is also important. One lakh transactions happen there.
The company she said has three products for advertisers – Glance Impact, Glance Engage and Glance Promote. The goal is to achieve results across the marketing funnel. One goal is to create newer creative experiences for advertisers. “So far we have been a lot on the display side. How do we bring other innovations for advertisers.” On mobile advertising the company has introduced newer formats. Earlier it was more brand campaigns. Now app download and performance has been introduced in the mix. Earlier the company only had display. Now it has brought in video. There are small elements of programmatic advertising as well. The goal is to add and innovate in different parts of the mobile marketing side of things.
She explains that advertiser objectives are also evolving over time. Glance offers a user experience in a single tap and this is something that advertisers find appealing. Earlier the aim of advertisers was just user reach. Then advertisers wanted to see engagement. Now they look at bottom funnel metrics. This refers to things like visits, app opens and app downloads. So Glance has been evolving the platform in that way to meet some of these advertiser needs. The aim is to tackle different parts of the marketing funnel for advertisers.
She said that advertisers find Glance appealing because they can reach millions of users in a day on mobile as a platform. “They can engage with users on the surface of the mobile device. That is what excites a brand.” She said that key ads categories that work with Glance include FMCG, BFSI, e-commerce, travel and tourism, food delivery, OTT.
In terms of research and development efforts she said that the aim is to create a platform at scale for markets. It is a very high frequency platform. Users unlock a device 150 times a day. So the company has to serve content power ads at milliseconds. A lot of research and development effort goes into improving the performance of the platform and user experience so that users get the best, most relevant content. Similarly AI plays a role in personalisation, content generation. “A lot of our R&D efforts are around improving platform metrics, speed around serving, around liquidity of content, around freshness and relevance of content, around the ability to scale and localise by markets.”
When asked about the role that acquisitions like Roposo have played for Glance she noted that the Commerce part of things is powered by Roposo. Roposo is also powering a lot of the Live side of things for Glance. She noted that In mobi has been in ad tech for several years and so some of the existing technology is leveraged by Glance’s advertising business as well from an exchange lens, a DSP lens etc.
In terms of trends being seen in ad tech and martech she points out to user privacy. This is already being seen in the US ecosystem and it is being seen in Android as well. Cookies are going away. Device IDs will also go away at some point. So how do advertisers and marketers work with that has to be seen. User privacy and consent will become core at the core of a lot of work in advertising, targetting etc. Companies will do work in this area.
User data is another issue. Companies will need to innovate and one will have to see how the next wave of advertising is tackled.
