Synamedia has developed an AI which can track down the many users who share video streaming passwords with friends and family.
The solution, Credentials Sharing Insight, helps to source missing income for services like Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Hulu.
Media research firm Magid claims 26% of millennials share passwords for video streaming services. Parks Associates, meanwhile, predicts that in 2021, $9.9 billion of pay-tv revenues and $1.2 billion of OTT revenues will be lost to credentials sharing.
Jean Marc Racine, CPO and GM EMEA of Synamedia, says:
“Casual credentials sharing is becoming too expensive to ignore. Our new solution gives operators the ability to take action.
Many casual users will be happy to pay an additional fee for a premium, shared service with a greater number of concurrent users. It’s a great way to keep honest people honest while benefiting from an incremental revenue stream.”
Credentials Sharing Insight works by analysing usage patterns of a user and flagging suspicious activity.
Once a video streaming provider subscribes to Credentials Sharing Insight, when suspicious patterns are found about users it will return a probability score — indicating how certain the system is that it’s found an infringer.
This score puts the power into streaming providers’ hands over how strict they want to be. A solution which ends up accidentally blocking users for legitimate use is unlikely to lead to continued loyalty.
Various measures can also be put in place for the severity of the offence. A person sharing their password to a family member, for example, could be prompted by email to upgrade to a premium account which allows it. Someone profiting by selling access to an account to many people could be hit with a fine.
Synamedia claims that Credentials Sharing Insight is already in trials with a number of pay-TV operators and is available as either a cloud or on-premise offering.
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