Glance TV, a live, interactive content platform for the home screen, or “screen zero” of Android smart TVs, was unveiled today by Glance, a consumer internet firm and a subsidiary of InMobi. Glance TV wants to change how people watch TV by giving them live content and real-time on-screen interaction.
With its offering and personalization, including strong social features that make it, Glance TV allows viewers to break out of a passive, constrained, and isolated viewing experience and become active participants in the shows they watch.
On their television home screens, Glance TV customers may interact with their favorite celebrities in real time. They can participate in tailored fitness training sessions, watch interactive cooking shows hosted by renowned chefs, or watch sports in communal watch-along that simulate immersive stadium environments.
Users can interact with and determine the direction of the content in shows by leaving live comments and reactions, including polls. Users can use QR codes on live TV to buy movie and event tickets, shop in real time, and even have their social media postings broadcast on Glance TV streams.
Unlike conventional long-form TV broadcasts, Glance TV will offer offbeat, individualized snackable content of 5–20 minutes in categories such as sports, entertainment, infotainment, e-sports, current events, lifestyle, food, and fitness.
Glance TV is a watershed moment for the company, which has revolutionized content consumption on smartphones by putting live, interactive content on the lock screen. Glance, which was launched in 2019, has grown to become one of the largest mobile lock screen platforms in the world, with over 200 million active users. Jio recently invested in integrating Glance’s ‘lock screen platform’ into the JioPhone Next smartphones.
The company has worked with big content producers like Zee5, Epic On, and Docubay to make sure its customers get new, tailored, and high-quality content every day. Glance TV aspires to be on roughly 30% of all smart TVs in India by the end of the year. People around the world will be able to use Glance TV, and the company also plans to make it work on other smart TV operating systems.
Speaking of the launch, Piyush Shah, Co-founder of InMobi Group and President and COO of Glance, said:
Glance has reimagined the lock screen of smartphones into a live screen for personalised, LIVE content. With Glance TV, we want to redefine television experiences just as we did with smartphones. This is TV in a way that has never been seen before and is a true innovation that extends the LIVE experience that Glance delivers on lock screens to television home screens.
Manish Gupta, Senior Vice President and GM, Glance, said:
With Glance TV, our intention is to remove the age-old connotation of TV being an idle way to pass time and change the perception of TV as the ‘idiot box’. Glance TV gives users experiences where they can be active while watching TV and can express themselves directly on the big screen, within virtual communities of fellow users.