With the surge in media subscription sign-ups over the last year, password-sharing among friends and family has unsurprisingly followed. A recent move by Netflix to start warning users who are trying to password-share is paving the way for digital publishers to follow suit, as the potential revenue loss is simply too risky to ignore.

In response to this password-sharing trend, Piano has released a new Suspicious Activity Report for publishers to identify password-sharers and engage them with appropriate communication, pricing and terms. Getting a glimpse into password-sharing frequency will help publishers curb the practice while increasing acquisition.

Our new Suspicious Activity Report offers a real-time breakdown of suspected password-sharing, benchmarking how it compares to other Piano publishers and offering the ability to target these users with communications to crack down on sharing accounts. The report monitors and displays activity based on three categories:  

1. Suspicious: Users in different locations who access content on more than one device at the same time. This is the slice that shows publishers how their suspicious activity ranks vs. other sites
2. Possibly Suspicious: Users who access content from two different devices at the same time, but don't necessarily have different locations (users from the Suspicious category are excluded)
3. Not Suspicious: Users who don't have any overlapping sessions on their account

The insights from this report can further future-proof your subscription business by letting you:   

• Communicate with password-sharers about your sharing restrictions or new bundles available to them and their network
• Split-test and introduce different subscription offers (e.g. Shared Subscriptions) to evolve your subscription strategy
• Introduce Site Licensing to allow multiple users under one contract to access the account with ease (for B2B publishers)

Read more about the Piano Suspicious Activity Report here, or reach out to your account manager to learn more.