Connections

While most media and entertainment service providers are closing out the year by focusing on what’s around the corner, Adobe chose to use the last week of 2016 to look back. And for good reason.

It was mid-2011 that Adobe found its first TV Everywhere partner, with CNN launching a web-based TV solution with Adobe’s help. What started with CNN, in the five years since, has blossomed into an industry go-to for TV Everywhere, with Adobe Primetime’s solution enabling nearly 600 multichannel video programming distributors (MVPDs) to open up online access to nearly 140 TV channels for pay TV customers, simplifying streaming of content on any device.

In the last five years, Adobe has been responsible for some of the biggest TV Everywhere live-streaming events, including the 2012 London Olympics, the 2013 NCAA March Madness basketball tourney, and both the 2014 Sochi and 2016 Rio Olympics.

Blake Elmquist, product marketing manager for Adobe Primetime, wrote in a recent blog post that since Adobe began offering TV Everywhere solutions, “active TVE users have grown to represent over 20% of all pay TV households. And, with plans underway to drive continued growth, TVE is poised to reach 70% of all pay TV households by 2018.”

In other words, Adobe was on to something at the outset. And the company only sees more growth for TV Everywhere adoption.

“Over the next two years, the Adobe Primetime team will be working closely with customers and partners to help realize the enormous growth potential of TV Everywhere,” Elmquist wrote. “Our initiative to reduce sign-in friction will be a critical component to this growth. Cumbersome sign-in requirements have been an impediment to consumer adoption of TV Everywhere since its inception. When consumers are frequently asked for a username and password, they often give up and go elsewhere.”

To make things easier for consumers, Adobe has been working with Apple since summer 2016 to put out a single sign-on solution for Apple devices. Both DirecTV and Dish are already enabling single sign-on for the Apple TV. “Consumers need a way to navigate between hundreds of TV Everywhere properties without hitting a sign-in wall on each app and site,” Elmquist wrote.

Additionally, Adobe and Comcast are both working with Cable & Telecommunications Association for Marketing (CTAM), to support “a new, universal, scalable solution” for TV Everywhere, facilitated by home-based authentication and single sign-on.

“These two authentication technologies work perfectly together because home-based authentication allows consumers to bypass the sign-in wall entirely if they are viewing TV Everywhere content from home and then single sign-on ensures that the authenticated access applies across all TV Everywhere sites and apps,” Elmquist wrote.