MAM
Adjust and Glance unite to unveil ‘The Cricket Playbook for Growth Marketers’
Mumbai: As India gears up for another exciting cricket season, marketers and advertisers across India are set to gain invaluable insights from the report titled ‘The Cricket Playbook for Growth Marketers’, jointly presented by mobile marketing analytics platform Adjust and one of the world’s leading Smart Lock Screen platforms, Glance. It is a guide for growth marketers who want to leverage this opportunity for mobile advertising, providing a unique avenue to deliver delightful consumer experiences.
The report covers trends and insights on user behavior and content consumption during the cricket season and best practices for engaging with cricket enthusiasts especially on smart surfaces. It encourages growth marketers to embrace artificial intelligence and machine learning to generate personalised content at scale, tailor user experiences, drive efficiencies and measure success. Employing device-based attribution models will improve accuracy, minimise ad fraud and maximise returns on campaign spends.
InMobi Group chief business officer Vasuta Agarwal said, “Owing to soaring costs during this sporting tournament, mobile becomes a preferred, innovative and lucrative medium for advertisers compared to traditional platforms. In fact, 73 per cent of IPL viewers tuned into the tournament digitally last year, and 30 per cent prefer watching it solely on mobile. The advent of smart surfaces like the Glance smart lock screen that facilitate effortless app downloads with a single tap is a game changer. We are glad to share these insights with the marketing community in collaboration with an industry partner like Adjust.”
Cricket fans are diverse, tech-savvy and highly engaged on their mobile devices and use it as the second screen for live match updates, browsing, ordering and socializing. They consume content in various languages and formats and prefer it to be instant and seamless.
Glance revealed interesting smart lock screen insights based on the 128 million users that tuned in for periodic updates of India’s favorite cricket tournament in 2023. The platform received 2.6 times higher engagement on video with a distinct surge in activity in the second half of the day, and 35 per cent of cricket content engagement came from vernacular languages. 70 per cent of cricket viewers were Gen Z and millennials, 65 per cent were male, 30 per cent were aged 45 plus and 55 per cent were from tier-I cities. While the highest cumulative engagement came from the South Indian region, Delhi, Maharashtra, and Uttar Pradesh were the most engaged states.
According to Adjust data, the country’s most popular sporting season drives higher app installs, session lengths and retention rates for various app categories, especially streaming, news, gaming, e-commerce, and food delivery. Compared to the overall 2023 daily install average during the IPL season, mobile apps overall and streaming apps witnessed 13 per cent and 45 per cent greater installs respectively. Streaming apps saw the longest session lengths, with the average session length having increased from 20.24 minutes to 32.48 minutes. The largest retention was in games, up three percentage points from 21 per cent to 24 per cent.
“Adjust empowers marketers to navigate the dynamic landscape of mobile advertising with confidence and precision. Our robust measurement solutions enable marketers to seamlessly evaluate user quality across diverse acquisition channels, including innovative platforms like Glance. With Adjust’s comprehensive user lifecycle tracking and innovative products like incrementality, marketers can unlock the full potential of their campaigns, harnessing the power of tentpole sporting events to drive growth and maximize ROI. Together with Glance, we’re shaping the future of app marketing, delivering actionable insights and best practices to fuel success in the competitive mobile landscape,” added Adjust director of partnerships – APAC Ajit Pawar.
As per the report, marketers should consider the context and content of their campaigns to connect with cricket fans, strategizing for before, during and after matches. They should also explore new formats and channels such as polls, quizzes, interactive units and smart lock screens to create immersive, interactive and engaging experiences.
Six tips for marketers to maximise success during the cricket season:
1. Enable seamless app installs on the first mobile touchpoint.
2. Tap into match moments to create intuitive experiences and re-engage consumers.
3. Enable discovery with a single tap to let fans get your app and their content before they unlock their phones.
4. Stay present and relevant throughout the cricket season.
5. Focus on data-driven decision-making by measuring success and observing usage trends,
6. Understand the assisting influence of various channels to drive conversion.
To read more about The Cricket Playbook for Growth Marketers, visit https://inmo.bi/3wVmlYS
Apple rarely announces minor updates with much fanfare, and iOS 26.4 is no exception. No dramatic redesigns, no flashy keynote moments. What it delivers instead is a focused set of improvements that sharpen the experience you already have. If that sounds underwhelming, spend a week with it. You will change your mind.
Apple Music Learns to Listen Better
The biggest shift in this update lives inside Apple Music. Apple has brought AI-powered playlist generation to the app, and it works on mood rather than genre. Type something like “rainy evening at home” or “running late on a Monday,” and it builds a playlist that actually fits. This is not algorithmic guesswork dressed up in new clothing. It genuinely reads the intent behind vague descriptions and responds well.
Alongside this, a new concerts feature scans your listening history and surfaces live events happening near you. It is a smart bridge between your digital music habits and real-world experiences. Apple is quietly making the case that a music app should do more than just play songs.
Shazam also gets a meaningful upgrade. It can now identify songs without an internet connection. This might sound like a minor convenience, but anyone who has tried to Shazam something at a crowded venue with patchy signal will tell you it is anything but minor. The feature works locally on-device, which also means it is faster.
CarPlay Gets Smarter Controls
CarPlay has been updated with deeper integration for intelligent voice assistants. The goal is to reduce how often drivers need to look at a screen or tap anything at all. You speak, things happen. It is a clear step toward making the driving experience safer without stripping away functionality. The integration feels natural rather than bolted on, which is a harder thing to achieve than it sounds.
The Fixes You Feel Every Day
This is where iOS 26.4 earns its keep. Keyboard responsiveness has been improved, and the difference is noticeable immediately. Typing feels more accurate and less combative. Accessibility features have been refined across the board, with better contrast options and adjusted spacing that makes the interface easier to read without forcing you into larger text sizes.
The Health app has also been updated. It now surfaces more actionable insights from your daily data rather than just displaying numbers. If your sleep patterns have shifted or your activity levels have changed, the app now contextualises that clearly instead of leaving you to interpret raw figures on your own.
These are the kinds of changes that do not photograph well for a press release. They also happen to be the ones that make your phone feel genuinely better to use.
A Few Other Additions
New emojis have been added in this update. They will find their way into your conversations faster than you expect. Family Sharing has also been updated, with more granular control over shared payments and subscriptions. If you share an Apple account with family members, this puts clearer limits on who can spend what, which has been a long-requested fix.
What This Update Actually Represents
iOS 26.4 is Apple doing what it does best when it is not trying to make headlines. Every addition here serves a clear purpose. The AI music features are genuinely useful. The CarPlay improvements address a real safety concern. The small UI fixes accumulate into a noticeably smoother daily experience.
There is no bloat. Nothing feels experimental or half-finished. That discipline is harder to maintain than it looks, especially as operating systems grow more complex with each passing year.
If you have been holding off on updating, this is the one worth installing.
