Shopping for a new car? Life360 will have your back
A popular family location-sharing app is accelerating plans to monetize its base of tens of millions of free users by allowing advertisers to send them targeted ads.
Life360 chief revenue officer James Selby told analysts on Tuesday that user subscriptions will remain the company’s main focus.
But its recent US$120 million ($181 million) acquisition of ad tech company Nativo means the ASX-listed group can now step up its strategy to earn more through advertising.
Investors were skeptical of the Nativo deal; Life360’s share price fell from $48 when it was announced on Nov. 10 to $36.35 on Tuesday.
Mr. Selby argued that the acquisition would strengthen user privacy by allowing Life360 to keep all user data within its own ecosystem.
“We are developing a family super app with multiple revenue pillars working together,” he added.
“We really want to respect that the paid product is for some people, but not all, so this really creates this meaningful incremental benefit without changing our mission, without changing the user experience or the core value proposition.”
Life360 started as a location sharing app that allowed family members to share their real-time location with other users.
It has since introduced features such as SOS alerts, roadside and medical assistance, severe weather alerts, family driving summaries, and features for locating pets using GPS trackers.
The platform had 91.7 million monthly active users worldwide as of September 30; This figure increased by 19 percent compared to the previous year.
As of that date, it had 3.2 million active users in Australia and New Zealand, up 28 percent year-on-year.
Most users belong to Life360’s free tier, with 1.9 million US and 800,000 international users choosing to pay for subscription plans ranging from $9.99 to $29.99 per month.
Mr Selby emphasized that Life360 would not sell data on individual users but would allow advertisers to target “large segments” of its users, such as frequent grocery shoppers or those looking to buy a new Toyota car.
Using Nativio’s “full-stack” infrastructure, Mr. Selby explained, these ads can be served to a group of Life360 users who read, for example, the Wall Street Journal.
He said the entire process will remain on the Life360 platform rather than being shared with external suppliers.
“Full-stack ownership actually means we have a lot less external companies that we have to work with, which ensures that data is not exposed to other providers, which obviously creates a security risk,” Mr Selby said.
“We provide certainty, we provide permanence, we provide the home environment that no one else has at this scale.”
Life360 is dual-listed on the US Nasdaq Global Select Market and the Australian Securities Exchange, where it made its debut in 2019.
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