How InMobi's Glance is changing digital habits for India and Bharat

In a bold move in 2018, it reimagined mobile advertising and developed a first-of-its-kind lock-screen content platform, which has 115 mn users across Asia today

Online content business is tough. Facebook and Google have a near monopoly in online ads, including those on the mobile device. Over the years, InMobi, the billion dollar ad-tech firm from India, has put up a brave fight. Its ad-analytics suite and partnerships with certain online publishers allowed it to carve out for itself a space which, though much smaller than that of Google and Facebook, has made in mark in handset advertising.

In 2018, the Naveen Tewari-founded firm took up a bold challenge: to reimagine mobile advertising. The effort yielded in a first-of-its kind lock-screen content platform called Glance, which today has 115 million users in India and Asia.

A large part of ads that users see on mobiles are either embedded in Facebook and Instagram feeds, are in Google search, or are banner and pop ads on websites.

“We stumbled upon the idea of lock-screen. Every mobile user interacts with it, yet no one ever thought of monetising it,” says Rohan Choudhary, who has been at InMobi for over eight years, and is currently vice president and head of product at Glance. “We felt why are not using the lock-screen to power content.” 

A team was put together to figure out a product road map. The initial research showed that lock-screen was majorly used to put up wallpapers, and access quick commands for things like music. The lock-screen is also an intimate place for the users, and early research which showed that there was a behaviour to frequently change the wallpapers to keep it fresh.

The other bit was figuring out what to show on the lock-screen. Here InMobi’s years of experience in the ad-tech helped. “We figured out the core (offering) has to be that we inform and entertain the users. Secondly, it has to be visual, perhaps video first,” said Choudhary. This was the time when Reliance Jio had made data tariffs a lot cheaper and it became possible to put quick-play videos without burning a hole through users’ pocket, added Choudhary.

In the course of this ‘start-up’, the first break-through happened when Glance piloted the product with Samsung, one of the largest phone makers in the world. “As part of the set of beta users, we also invited executives at Samsung to try it. The response was really good,” said Choudhary. After this, Samsung agreed to ship Glance pre-installed in certain new smartphones models (barring the premium S series phones).

Since then, Glance has struck similar partnerships with Xiaomi, Vivo and other original equipment manufacturers (OEMs). Suffice to say that Glance’s partnerships with OEMs is a critical piece of the puzzle. Choudhary did not share the specifics of the contracts but said there was a “revenue component that Glance offers to the OEMs” in return for letting Glance come pre-installed in their handsets. That it comes pre-installed in phones also explains why Glance saw phenomenal user growth rather quickly (Its daily active users are more than Instagram and Paytm).

Table: Daily Active Users (DAUs) of leading mobile apps between Q4 2019-Q1 2020

Content	WhatsApp	320 mn
	Facebook	175 mn
	YouTube	135 mn
	Glance	100 mn
	TikTok	60 mn
	Instagram	36 mn
Payments	Paytm	39 mn
	Google Pay	19 mn
	PhonePe	17 mn
E-commerce	Flipkart	15 mn
	Amazon	12 mn
Food	Swiggy	11 mn
	Zomato	10 mn

Source: Zinnov

Over the years, the product has also matured. The content offering has grown to include entertainment videos, news nuggets, content on fashion, movies, food and celebrities and, more recently, short user-generated videos. Choudhary said Glance had partnerships with over 100 content publishers including NDTV, Shemaroo and e-commerce firm Bulbul.

Glance has also integrated Roposo, a short video firm InMobi acquired in November 2019. USG (user-generated content) from Roposo is repackaged and pushed onto Glance, as well as other content from existing content partnerships of Glance.

The lock-screen content has to be in a certain shape and size. For that Glance has created tools that publishers use to package content in specific formats. Sometimes teams at Glance also package the content using the same tools. The idea is to make the tools easy to be used by anyone, said Choudhary.

Recently, Glance was in news because Google led a $145 million investment round at a valuation of over a billion dollars. The event was lauded because among the unicorns in India, Glance, with only 400 employees, is said to be one of the leanest amongst them. On the Google investment, Choudhary insisted that the partnership is a financial one, but experts say that it would lead to deeper ties between Glance and Google’s Android mobile operating system. That Glance learns user preferences betters and shows more relevant content is a likely outcome.

The future road map has two main elements: deeper the user engagement, and geographic expansion, said Choudhary. “In 2019, we launched games on Glance, which we consider our second big milestone the Samsung partnership.” The new capability stems from excellent use-case on the lock-screen and bumped up engagement. On the geographic expansion front, “Glance is already present in 15 Southeast Asian markets including Thailand, Indonesia, Philippines, and will expand to Brazil next year, and turn towards the US market through partnerships with telecom operators by the last quarter of 2021,” said Choudhary.