Nearly 100 million people worldwide, including 50 million in the U.S., use location-sharing app Life360 to stay connected with and keep track of their family members, pets and personal belongings. And this particular user base is highly engaged. They open the app an average of five times a day, according to Brian McDevitt, VP of Global Advertising, which puts it just behind Amazon in terms of daily usage.
That sort of heavy engagement runs deeper than parents wanting to make sure their teens are driving safely or pet owners being alerted that Fido escaped the backyard. During a panel discussion at CES 2026 titled “From Funnel to Flywheel: How Culture Drives Growth in Media & Marketing,” McDevitt shared how Life360 strengthens its connection with users.
Scoring Buzz with Relevance
Though Life360 isn’t a social media platform, it does enable users to send short prewritten notes to one another. When it added “6,7” with a sound effect to its notes library, “we saw this crazy increase in monthly active usage,” McDevitt said. Rather than Life360 shoehorning its way into a trend simply for the sake of it, “it’s an example of us just being thoughtful about how to be authentic to our members.”
Another example occurred during last year’s Super Bowl between the Philadelphia Eagles and the Kansas City Chiefs. Life360’s core feature alerts users when people in their immediate network — their Circle, in the brand’s parlance — have arrived at certain destinations. “So when either team scored a touchdown, we sent an alert to families that lived in those cities saying, ‘Kansas City has just entered the end zone,’” McDevitt explained.
The resulting social media engagement showed Life360 that sports was of significant interest to its audience, something it intends to lean into more going forward. It also gave the company the confidence to pursue other moments relevant to users, even if those moments aren’t directly related to the app’s core purpose.
Connection for the Win
And when the moment is relevant to users and Life360’s mission alike, it’s a win for everyone, including third-party partners. “We use those moments of relevance to connect brands into those very helpful times,” McDevitt said. “We can use our understanding of our members in a way that can help inform a creative canvas for a brand to think about: ‘Well, how do I want to participate in this?’”
Life360’s partnership with Uber is a case in point. Travelers who use Life360’s Landing Notifications feature to automatically notify people once they land at an airport are connected directly to Uber, enabling them to immediately book a ride without having to call up a separate ride-share app. “It’s really leading into the product experience in a way that feels authentic,” McDevitt said. Uber is said to have booked more than 100,000 rides this way during the first several months of testing alone.
Digital Meets IRL
Life360 leverages signals it receives from users regarding their day-to-day activities and connections to create even more purposeful connections, along with engagement and brand loyalty. And McDevitt believes that people are craving this kind of connection. “I think there is a hunger for things that unify us. And we live in a business that’s very family-oriented and we think about ways in which we can bring people together,” McDevitt said. “Our platform is very much in this intersection of digital and in real life. We’re watching people walk around the real world, living with their real family as part of their real circle of loved ones. And so we’re thinking about how do we bring those elements together in this really interesting cocktail that brands can participate in that will feel really authentic to what we’re doing.”
