Is SEA’s discovery battle moving into the lock screen?

The battle for consumers’ attention is increasingly being fought before they even start searching.

Digital marketing has traditionally focused on capturing demand from consumers who recognise a need, search for solutions, and compare products. But AI, recommendation engines, and conversational interfaces are changing that sequence, surfacing products before consumers actively look for them.

Across Southeast Asia, brands are being challenged to rethink where discovery begins. Rather than relying solely on search and other intent-led channels, marketers must build awareness and influence preferences before consumers know what they want.

“We believe discovery is moving from search-driven exploration to recommendation-driven exposure. In many cases, consumers are being shown what they want before they ever think to search for it,” said Malika Kutub, director, APAC at Glance, in a conversation with MARKETING-INTERACTIVE.

According to Kutub, Glance sees an opportunity in the lock screen, where personalised recommendations and commerce experiences can reach consumers before they open an app or start searching for a product.

The scale of AI’s influence on shopping was reflected in a study by Lazada and Kantar, which found that 88% of Southeast Asian consumers base purchase decisions on AI, while 92% rely on AI for personalised product recommendations, and 83% are willing to pay more for AI-powered shopping experiences.

This points to a market that is increasingly, as Glance puts it: “AI-first, AI-dependent, and AI-preferring.”

For marketers, the challenge is translating this shift into meaningful engagement and, ultimately, sales.

While search remains valuable for reaching consumers with established intent, brands must also consider how to influence the earlier moments when awareness, interest, and preference take shape.

Bringing discovery closer to the consumer

One of the challenges facing marketers is the growing competition for attention across apps and digital platforms. Even as brands invest in content and performance marketing, consumers are navigating crowded feeds, multiple shopping destinations, and an expanding number of digital services.

Glance is positioning the lock screen as an alternative point of entry for discovery. Rather than requiring consumers to open an app and actively look for products, its approach centres on presenting personalised content, recommendations, and shopping experiences at the device surface.

The proposition is that brands can reach consumers during everyday mobile interactions, before they enter a specific app or begin a conventional shopping journey.

“We believe the visibility crisis exists not because consumers are lacking content, but because they’re overwhelmed by it. People download more apps than ever, but actively open only a small fraction of them,” Kutub said.

“That’s why Glance is rethinking the lock screen. Traditionally, it was idle real estate. Today, it is an intelligent, agentic environment, that understands context, preferences, and intent.”

For marketers, this presents a different way of thinking about digital visibility. Instead of competing exclusively within established destinations, brands can explore discovery experiences that meet consumers earlier in their decision-making process.

However, appearing on a device surface is only the starting point. The commercial value depends on whether that exposure is relevant enough to generate interest and whether the subsequent experience gives consumers a compelling reason to take action.

Shortening the path from inspiration to purchase

The opportunity extends beyond content recommendations. AI-powered shopping features, including conversational agents and virtual try-ons, are designed to reduce the friction between discovering a product and deciding to buy it.

In a conventional online shopping journey, consumers may encounter a product on one platform, search for it elsewhere, compare alternatives, read reviews, and navigate a retailer’s catalogue before reaching checkout. Each additional step creates an opportunity for hesitation or abandonment.

Virtual try-ons can help address uncertainty by allowing consumers to visualise products on themselves, while conversational interfaces enable shoppers to describe their preferences, budgets or intended occasions in natural language instead of navigating filters and menus.

By bringing these functions closer to the point of discovery, Glance is looking to combine inspiration, evaluation, and purchase within a more connected experience.

“What’s changing is the ability to collapse those steps into a single experience,” Kutub said.

“The outcome is that discovery, evaluation, and purchase increasingly happen within the same interaction. What begins as inspiration has a much shorter path to action because the friction traditionally separating those stages has been removed.”

The commercial argument is that fewer steps and more relevant recommendations can help consumers move from passive interest to a purchase decision. For brands, this makes the quality of the experience just as important as the initial exposure.

What happens when discovery becomes more immersive?

Working with brands across industries, Glance also finds that interactive discovery could influence shopping behaviour.

One brand in the retail and fashion industry incorporated AI-powered virtual try-on experiences into its discovery journey, allowing consumers to visualise products themselves rather than relying solely on product imagery.

According to figures shared by Glance for the particular campaign, 48.8% of shoppers used the virtual try-on experience. The campaign also recorded 2.5 times growth in add-to-cart actions, a 36% increase in cart value, and a 17% uplift in average order value. Glance-engaged users recorded a fourfold conversion lift compared with non-engaged users.

The figures suggest that interactive product experiences can play a role beyond attracting attention, potentially helping consumers evaluate products and build purchase confidence.

For marketers considering similar approaches, the more useful question is whether these experiences deliver improvements that would not otherwise have occurred, rather than simply whether engaged audiences convert at higher rates.

“What’s particularly interesting isn’t just the conversion uplift. It’s the fact that conversion improved because confidence improved. Moving discovery closer to decision-making and making the interaction more immersive fundamentally changed how consumers moved from interest to purchase,” Kutub emphasised.

Measuring influence beyond the click

As discovery becomes less dependent on deliberate searches and clicks, marketers also face a measurement challenge. Traditional delivery metrics remain useful for understanding reach and engagement, but they may not fully capture the influence of experiences that shape preferences before consumers actively enter a shopping journey.

Kutub said marketers are increasingly looking at outcomes such as brand lift, consideration lift, purchase intent, incremental sales, and incremental return on ad spend.

For AI-powered discovery, additional measures could include engagement with interactive shopping features, add-to-cart behaviour, average order value, and conversion lift.

“The key question is no longer simply: ‘Did someone click?’” Kutub said. “It’s increasingly: ‘Did the experience move them closer to a decision?’”

Ultimately, AI-led discovery does not eliminate the need for search, social media or established commerce platforms. Instead, it expands the number of places where consumer preferences can be shaped and purchase decisions can begin.

“As discovery becomes ambient and agentic, we believe understanding influence across the full decision-making journey will become more important than measuring isolated interactions within it.”

This article was written in collaboration with Glance.