A Powerful Glance: Benefits of Glance Platform For Both Brands And Users

This article was first published in IMPACT Magazine.

Vasuta Agarwal, Chief Business Officer, Consumer Platform Advertising, InMobi, speaks to IMPACT Weekly Magazine about how the lock screen platform, Glance, plays to the advantage of both users and brands.

Q: Glance, when it launched, was seen as a very novel idea, which tapped into an otherwise dormant part of the phone. How does it really work, and was it the first-ever lock screen platform in India?

Vasuta Agarwal: When we started Glance in 2019, it was the first lock screen platform coming out of India. It enables the seamless discovery of content for users. We’ve basically partnered with all the large Android smartphone players. Glance sits as software on the device, and every time a user unlocks a phone, he or she can see different types of content, be it a piece of news, a sporting event, a game, or something related to interesting apps. Essentially, we bring three to four propositions on the lock screen. One is around live news sports and entertainment, another is gaming, and then we have live commerce. If you select a particular section within Glance, let’s say gaming, you will find all the different games that a user can play even without having to download them. Similarly, you have a shop tab.

With a single click, a user can actually discover different kinds of content, you don’t even have to go into an app. There is also the live proposition, where you can see how many active users are currently on a section. Here you also have live shopping events, live music shows, and even live concerts, all of which run on the screen.

Q: Can you tell me how many users Glance has today in India? Also, could you give me the breakup of those who’ve installed Glance on their own and those who are using Glance because it’s already there on their phones?

VA: We are present on more than 200 million devices in India across all the major manufacturers that you can think of in Android. We are seeing users spending almost 25 minutes a day on Glance across these different kinds of content categories and genres. In 2021, we saw almost 75% growth in engaging users. On average, a user may be unlocking a phone 70 times, and so the kind of variety of content that you can bring in for a single user is just enormous.