When traditional distribution platforms offer TV Everywhere (TVE) services requiring authentication every time they access the service, a lot of people don’t bother.
“In the past, each time a TVE viewer encountered a sign-on prompt, the chances of a successful log-in were only 56 percent. In many cases, viewers were simply unwilling to search for their pay-TV credentials, or unaware that they existed in the first place,” writes Blake Elmquist on his Adobe blog.
According to Elmquist, things improved after Adobe Primetime developed single sign-on (SSO) functionality for TV Everywhere.
Adobe data from September 2017 shows a new record in TVE consumption: authenticated video starts have grown 46% year-over-year, reaching 500 million. Authenticated TVE viewers are up 25% year-over-year, at 20.45 million uniques. And up to 45% of authentications are happening via SSO, at an individual platform level.
TVE growth will continue as Adobe continues to roll out a multi-phase plan for SSO. In phase one, Adobe worked with platform providers and media companies to enable SSO across multiple apps, on the same device. This improved experience allows viewers to sign-on with their pay-TV credentials on a device such as Roku and then navigate from one TVE app to another, on the same device, without having to sign-on again.
In phase two, Adobe is rolling out SSO across all devices. Once enabled, viewers will only be required to sign-on one time, on any device, to easily access all TVE apps across their desktop, mobile, and OTT devices. This represents a significant evolution of the TVE user experience. Today, this cross-device SSO functionality has already been enabled within specific operating systems like iOS, tvOS, and Roku OS.
