You Phone May Soon Have Persistent Ads on the Lock Screen

at a glancean India-based tech company, will soon place ads on your Android lock screen, with the help and instigation of your friendly wireless carrier.

Glance is a $2 billion advertising technology (adtech) company backed by Google and other investors. It provides a variety of media for the home screen of the participating phone, which may actually be quite compelling for some people. Glance provides news, quizzes, photos, videos and more, right on your lock screen†

“The potential of lock screen ads is attractive to advertisers. Because lock screens are seen hundreds of times a day and have no visual noise, if done right, they can be high-impact and high-engagement ad placements,” Glance said. There has been a willingness to do,” financial analysts Candace Moses Tell Lifewire via email. “Opening up additional channels to connect people with relevant material can have a big impact on marketers, as long as it’s relevant and easy to use.”

content grazing

If you’ve ever watched people use their phones on public transportation or while waiting in line, you’re familiar with swiping to cycle through messages, Snapchat, TikTok, and more. If you’ve never seen others do it, it’s probably because you did it yourself.

In this way, Glance is already a good idea. If you can, why unlock your phone to see various apps and feeds – yes – just by glancing at its lock screen? After all, you’re just “consuming content,” an ugly marketing term that’s perfectly accurate in this case. And part of that content stream will inevitably become ads.

Glance is already pre-installed on many Android phones in India and Asia and runs on approximately 400 million smartphones.According to Manish Singh in TechCrunch, Glance is now working with US carriers and could be preinstalled on phones as soon as next month. As you can imagine, carriers are eager to get in on the deal. It seems likely that there will be a revenue share, with carriers taking a cut of ad revenue or directly charging for Glance to be pre-installed on phones.

The lock screen has been a quiet place so far. It started with a clock and then gained various password entry methods, letting people show ugly pictures of their kids, adding icons for cameras and flashlights, notifications, and more. But compared to what’s behind the scenes, it’s relatively casual. In 2022, things are changing.

In iOS 16, the next-generation iPhone operating system due this fall, Apple has overhauled its home screen. It will have widgets, kind of like complications that can be set on the face of the Apple Watch, and be fully customizable, from photos to fonts and colors. credible rumor It is also said that the next iPhone Pro will get an always-on screen to display these complications.

Meanwhile, Android phones have long displayed varying amounts of information on their always-on lock screens.

Will we tolerate home screen ads?

Do lock screen ads work in the US? it depends. Some people are happy to browse the web without an ad blocker or tracker blocker enabled. Others play ad-supported games and don’t seem to be annoyed by them. Still others would rather pay any price than have an ad ruin their experience.

“Glance is primarily active in Asia, where consumers are much more tolerant of viewing ads on the lock screen,” Moses said. “Lock screen ads are new in the US market. So user tolerance may be an issue.”

Some ads are not bad. Instagram is full of them, but in the author’s experience, it also shows some of the least annoying ads.

“Companies with really creative and interesting ads are probably the only ones that are welcome into this protected smartphone space. But these are just a few, and most brands really need to test this before launching ad spend,” Chief Marketing Officer official Jerry Han Tell Lifewire via email.

If a phone with Glance is cheaper than the same phone without ads, then perhaps many people will opt for an ad-supported option, similar to how Amazon’s ad-subsidized Kindle. Who knows, maybe Glance will become a popular network and people will love its news, games, videos, and more, and its ads. In this case, people may prefer to buy a Glance-equipped phone or install Glance on their current phone. So why not? We already pay for TV with ads. Why not this?