Market research : authentication on media website, a growing trend

As announced in an earlier article of this blog, I organized a 2-day conference on Single-Sign-On at RTBF (read more here). From a market research perspective this conference allowed participants to clearly understand that SSO was a growing trend among public service broadcasters.

We had the please to listen to 9 amazing speakers from very different organizations and horizons : Tim Rowell (Piano.io), Ben Sekhon (Gigya, leader on the SSO market), David Teague and Maya Ross (BBC), Wouter Bigaré (ex Media ID), Michael De Lucia (RTS), Annick Deseure (Mediahuis), Quentin Castelain (Freedelity), Robert Dawson Scott (STV), Michael Barocco (EBU) and Joris Vanden Storme (VRT).

Here are my 4 key learning points from these 2 days

1. SSO does NOT impact negatively your market share : don’t be scared of SSO

One common assumption is that putting a SSO system in place and forcing authentication will lead to lower audiences and market share. All examples given during those days prove the opposite. If you have great content, users will not find it problematic to register. This is especially true when some exceptional events (olympic games, world cup) happen. The drive is so big that all users want to get access to the content

2. SSO is necessary to compete with the GAFA

What other options do public service actually have ? Not many.
The recent experience of Facebook in Slovakia shows that being dependent on social media platforms is extremely dangerous. Building a 1-2-1 relationship leveraged by data is essential to survive to the GAFA power.

3. SSO opens a new world of analytics possibility (Dashboards)

While traditional audience measurement relied on panels and statistical inference, SSO enables to analyze audiences with much greater precision. You know exactly who consumed your content, how and when.
The quantity of data at your disposal also opens new analytical never-imagined-before possibilities. This is Big Data based ethnography and it’s amazingly exciting.

4. SSO enables to better understand customers and to create better, more suited content that will leverage loyalty

Using large scale data collection enables to put in light behaviors that couldn’t be detected in panels for instance. But more than that, rather than just enabling measurement, advanced analytics is instrumental to understand precisely how consumers behave (be it in a non-rational way as behavioral economics taught us). This opens a new world of opportunities to improve the customer experience and create new products, services, content that better fit the customers expectations.

Conclusion 

from a market research perspective the trend in public service media is clearly heading towards original content being “protected” behind an authentication system.