Android smartphones can be a tricky market, and in an effort to squeeze as much profit out of a phone as possible, carriers often sell every square inch of a phone to the highest bidder. Packaged, often uninstallable crappy apps fill your app drawer and advertise their services. The rules are much looser for packaged apps compared to apps from the Play Store, so data-hungry companies like Facebook often pay for a place where it’s easier for them to collect data.
According to a TechCrunch report, one new startup is inventing a whole new, more invasive form of software: lock screen ads! Glance is a subsidiary of Indian advertising company InMobi, and TechCrunch reports that the lock screen “content”company “plans to launch its lock screen platform on Android smartphones in the US within two months.”
Glance app is a full screen lock screen capture. It is very similar to a regular social network like TikTok or Snapchat Discover, but it only shows content from Glance. Imagine that every time you turn on your phone, you are first shown an auto-playing video from the popular unbranded TikToker, and you get the idea. The company’s website promises “unprecedented reach”and “genuine engagement”with its audience. Naveen Tewari, founder and CEO of InMobi, gave a rather dystopian description of his company’s strategy to Forbes India, saying, “Consumers will shift from finding content to consuming what they are shown.”
Of course, this is just a big promotional vector. The third major navigation link on the company’s website is “Advertisers,”where the business page promises a “no-hassle campaign”on the “zero screen,”the first screen users see when they turn on their phones. A quick look at this “business page”shows that it’s very difficult to tell which Glance content is paid and which isn’t. All of this can be paid content. The advertiser’s page shows a number of “success stories”, such as a cryptocurrency quiz game promoted by a crypto app that “educated”users about cryptocurrencies and increased sales. Question #1 in the Glance demo video: “Which of these assets made more profit in 2020: bitcoin or gold?”
Glance also promises it can provide advertisers with tons of personal data for targeting and tracking. It lists the demographics, their location, the interests they have chosen in the app, the language they speak, and the phone model. Google is actually an investor in Glance. Glance lists Vivo, Motorola, Xiaomi, Oppo, Realme and Samsung as partners and says the company has “over 80% coverage of all new smartphones”in India.