Transformation of Ads Amidst - Short Attention Span of Audience

What comes to your mind when you hear the term advertisements?

“Kya aapke toothpaste me namak h”, “Ye Deewar tuth ti kyu nahi”, or maybe some hoardings on your roadways, or wait even the newspaper has it, and if we narrow down further then your phone is no novice to it either.

Advertisements are all around us but what we see today is hardly what it looked like centuries back, advertisements have evolved from basic oral announcements to complex web 3.0 advertising.

The reason for this epic transformation can just be broken down to a 4 letter word, “need”.

It is such a big requisite now that companies recklessly burn billions on it. In fact, according to a study by Gartner, companies spend around 12% of their annual revenue on advertising.

And this advertisement not only supports the company which is marketing its product but also compensates for the platform on which it is doing so, in a big way. Consider newspapers, for instance, earlier only a few people were privileged enough to get hold of these knowledge pedias as they used to cost a lot, but as advertisement companies popped in, the newspaper agencies shifted revenue generation from subscription as a primary source of income, to advertising. This led to a drastic drop in price per unit, to a very minimal amount, making it affordable to the masses and within no time these grey sheets filled with nano words could be seen in the hands of the masses.

So, now do you see the wonder advertising can do?

It can make your whole product free, do you think that you’re able to access social media for free? No! Your advertisers are burning large chunks of money for it, simply for you to become aware of their product? Again no! There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch.

According to a study by Nielsen, companies generate an average of $2.87 on every dollar they spend on advertising and that is the power of advertising.

Well, this is an attractive proposition, but customers are losing their attention span day by day and companies want to transform their long boring advertisements into short, crispy, and interesting ones, which can grab the attention of the hyper-anxious GenZ.

Now, this seemingly small problem is a great cause of concern for many companies, and they’re well aware that, to target this short attention span just being creative with their advertising stories, or onboarding some big celebs won’t work.

They need something different, something which is tough to avoid and could cater to a large pool of audience. This is where your lock screen offers them a waiver and one company has monetized on it already.

For all those who are aware of it, yes, “Glance” is the elephant in the room and for those who aren’t, don’t worry, the following description would help you.

What’s the first thing you see when you open your phone? No, it’s not WhatsApp netizens, it’s the lock screen.

Lockscreen which was invented for user’s privacy, who would have thought that it would turn out to be such an interesting proposition for advertisers. But yes, it is being done because there is just one thing that advertisers don’t do, i.e., leave any option unexplored!

And what the lock screen offers is advertising at zero usage, think of it you’re getting all sorts of advertisements even before your actual usage of your device has begun and that’s where things get interesting.

According to Glance, an average user spends around 25 minutes on their platform. It can be in the form of a short video presented on your screen or a quick game, the options are endless, and the end result is money, big money!

And all of this may seem a good business proposition, but it is only before you know the complete story.

Glance is not something that you have to install separately, if you’re an Android user it comes into your device by default, pre-installed. This is why it’s not just a good proposition, but an excellent and revolutionary one.

You don’t have to push to get users, you tie up with phone brands, set it up by default and you have a billion-dollar market ready, unpenetrated, and with huge potential. No wonder why Jio invested a whopping sum of $200 million in it.

The user base of Glance is growing at 30% YoY basis and it has been only some time since it was founded in 2019.

The primary reason for the company’s huge success is that users aren’t even aware that they have it on their phones. It’s the biggest Trojan horse ever made!

Now, as you know what Glance does, you probably also know how it solves the problem discussed above, the problem of short attention span. As it offers you the quickest rundown of ads of all sorts on your lock screen, without you even realizing it.

This is a proposition that will only grow as the attention span of the over-anxious netizens will decrease. An offering on which no big player would like to lose, which also explains why companies like Google and Jio are so interested in this, and why this lock screen company is valued at the mighty $2 billion mark.

Now, before your short attention span makes you turn on your Insta again, just lock your phone and check “Kya aapke phone me Glance hai”?