Smartphone Lock Screens as Ad Spots? Digital Marketers, Take Note

Credit: Glance

The smartphone lock screen might not just be a digital timepiece and placeholder for notifications for long. Google-backed company, Glance, is set to launch its lock screen system in the United States within two months. Catering to Android users, Glance specializes in providing lock screen entertainment, from games to news and current affairs, and has garnered more than 200 million users in India and Southeast Asia. The company is developing a digital service for the American market that will send ads to Android lock screens.

Glance lock screens feature a rotating set of different content categories, including current events, entertainment, sports, travel, and games. It also streams live events like concerts and live selling on lock screens. What’s more, the platform displays a lot of ads, which makes it a juicy prospect for digital marketers. After all, smartphone users have to get through their lock screens before they access the internet or their preferred apps.

Apple also plans to expand the lock screen functionalities of iOS devices as shown in its preview of iOS 16 at the 2022 WWDC. It will soon run widgets that display information like upcoming calendar events, weather conditions, and alarms, on top of the deeper customizations afforded to users. In addition, lock screens will have a Live Events feature that shows scores of sports games, the progress of food deliveries and tasks,  and other similar updates.

This opens up the platform for ads or a service like Glance down the line. And if Glance proves to be successful, Apple following suit will be a certainty. So how come apps and advertisers are after lock screens when it’s seemingly viewed as an afterthought by smartphone users?

The Emergence of Lock Screen Marketing

The reason most people think nothing of lock screens is that these merely serve as security barriers with limited information to sustain their interests. A platform like Glance changes this dynamic by making the screen as engaging and interactive as any smartphone app. With engagement follows monetization, and ad placements come as the ideal solution for such. Given the breadth of content served by Glance or any similar app, brands from various industries can maximize their reach and conversions by placing ads on the platform.

What makes lock screen marketing particularly enticing to digital marketers is the frequency with which smartphone users interact with lock screens. This year’s digital marketing statistics reveal that users, on average, unlock their phones 70 times a day. Moreover, they consume lock screen content 65 times a day. This beats the number of times users access social media apps by a wide margin, although social media still reigns supreme in engagements.

A platform like Glance exponentially raises the engagement of lock screens with its varied content. It also allows users to share content with other Glance users. As such, there was a 55% increase in the volume of shared lock screen content in December 2021, year-over-year. Considering that Glance holds live events on top of its rotating features, the platform could give social media platforms a run for their money in terms of engagement.

All that said, lock screen marketing has the potential to change the mechanics of content distribution strategies. Brands and digital marketers would surely want a hefty slice of that pie if Glance successfully penetrates most smartphone users.