01 Mar 2024 15:16:111 ViewBy Stuart Condie
SYDNEY--Life360 accelerated plans to sell customer access to third-party advertisers after trials showed no drop in the family safety app's user numbers or engagement, its chief executive said.
The trials indicated that customers viewed exposure to targeted advertising as part of a social contract in having Life360's product for free, Chief Executive Chris Hulls said Friday. Rolling out advertising involved less risk than expanding into new product areas, he told The Wall Street Journal.
Life360 expects revenue from advertising to users of the free version of its tracking and safety app to eventually match its income from subscriptions. The company, which reports in U.S. dollars, generated $200 million in core subscription revenue in 2023.
"Most of our focus to date has been monetizing by having people pay us directly, but 85% of our people don't pay us, and we want to demonstrate we can make money off of them," Hulls said.
Hulls said that Life360's audience is expanding as tech-savvy millennials, who typically have fewer objections to being tracked, have families. Life360 will still screen advertisers and not pitch ads at children on the app, he said.
"We'll just turn it off for very young kids, most likely under 13s in the U.S., that age range. We're going to be thoughtful. We're not going to have anyone advertising to our customers," Hulls said.
Life360, which allows users to see family members' locations and offers paid functions such as emergency service dispatch, has aspirations to widen its product suite further, Hulls said.
"We want to do fintech for kids like a debit card, we want eldercare products, we want special deals for our customers that aren't harvesting but are giving them extra value, we want to have a doc locker for your important documents; there's so many features we can build," he said.
Write to Stuart Condie at stuart.condie@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
