Mumbai: Glance has unveiled its 2024 Trends Report for India, revealing a significant shift in user engagement patterns towards personalised content discovery. With over 235 million active users, the emergence of ‘glancing’ has redefined how users interact with digital content, offering a refreshing alternative to traditional app-based browsing. This trend effectively addresses concerns such as information overload and app fatigue, allowing users to discover relevant content effortlessly.
A noteworthy finding of the report is the active engagement of users with content in their preferred regional languages. On a daily basis, regional language content received an impressive 550 million ‘glances’, with 10 out of the top 25 pieces focusing on regional subjects like news, movies, and local interests. This surge in demand for personalised linguistic experiences is evident as users accessed regional content almost twice as much as English content.
In terms of content consumption, national news, sports, and entertainment emerged as the top three categories, comprising 19 per cent, 18 per cent and 16 per cent of user interactions respectively. National events such as the G20 summit and the Chandrayaan mission garnered immense attention, with four billion and two billion glances respectively.
Indiantelevision.com on the sidelines of the media roundtable conference held by Glance, caught up with InMobi Group business officer Vasuta Agarwal where she explained how this report would be beneficial from the brand’s perspective.
Edited excerpts
On sharing the brief of this report and the need to create one
The report was about the user trends that we are seeing at Glance’s platform. We have been releasing similar reports every year because the intent is to capture the essence of the year on what’s been happening on Glance around the world. Last year’s report wouldn’t have been around the world because we were primarily in India and Indonesia at the time. This time we are gaining presence in other markets as well.
On brands effectively targeting the diverse user base of over 235 million active Glance Smart Lock Screen users in India
What we know broadly about the users is the demographic. We talked about 61 per cent being male and 39 per cent female. We know a little bit about their location and which cities they are in. We know what kind of content they are consuming like travel, who likes news, sports etc. Using all of these different elements, we create audiences which brand may want to reach out and that’s how the audience part happens. We bring in both interactivity and the engagement in the creatives.
On the role of creativity in capturing the attention and interest of Glance Smart Lock Screen users
I think it plays a big role. Attention span of the users is a huge challenge now because people have so much to consume and so many apps to go into. Capturing user attention has become a huge problem for brands because we have been present on the lock screen of the device. It becomes much easier for the brands to reach the users because you are right there on the first screen of the phone. Then comes the creativity like how you’re gonna hold the users attention, can you create some element of interaction, or some gamification like for example we talked about we used IPL live score to bring engagement. We used different color catalogs for American Tourister for interactivity. So different elements in the creative can help users to engage with brands.
On attention span reducing more and more due to rapid advancement in technology
Attention span is going less because of so much content in apps. The challenge at some times is that users themselves don’t know where to spend time. It is a combination of both. If there weren’t so many, users might not engage too much on the phone. That’s why it becomes important how you get the right information and content to the user so that their time is well spent. At Glance, we try to bring the right personalisation for users so what is useful for you might be very different then what’s useful for me and so on.
On brands ensuring their content remains relevant with users
There are a lot of things that brands need to do. One is that creators need to be continuously looked at because unless creatives keep with where the user is spending more time. For instance, five years back nobody was making videos on insta reels on the brand’s side. Until two and a half years back, nobody was making special creatives for brands because as users are spending more time on the platforms, brands also have to innovate and capture their attention. I think that’s a continuous thing that brands have to invest in. Now it’s much faster, earlier disruption would happen in ten years, now it happens every 6-12 months so we have to keep up with that pace.
