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The Evolution of Consumer Identity:
Five Predictions for 2016

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The Evolution of Consumer Identity:
Five Predictions for 2016
Thanks to the continued growth of regional privacy regulations, the Internet
of Things and biometric authentication, 2015 saw a marked change in the
way leading enterprises approached and understood customer identities.
2016 promises to be a year of enhanced development in the customer
identity and access management (CIAM) space, with customer
experience, data privacy and personalization proving to be increasingly
critical components of business success. Let’s take a look at five identity-
related trends we foresee taking hold in the new year.
1. Traditional usernames and passwords will begin to die.
Consumer patience is all but disappearing as real-time, frictionless access to
information, applications and social connections proliferates. Technologies
like social authentication and Apple’s Touch ID have have become
exceedingly popular in light of the increasing emphasis on convenience.
According to a 2015 survey, 88% of US
consumers claim to have logged into
a website or mobile application using
social network login, citing dissatisfaction
with spending time filling out registration
forms as the number one reason why
they choose to log in socially.
2016 is poised for a continuation of
this trend, with traditional usernames
and passwords slowly moving toward
extinction. As advanced means of
biometric authentication gain greater
adoption and mobile becomes the new norm, consumers will continue to
opt for signing in using their existing social (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) and
payment (Amazon, PayPal, etc.) credentials or thumbprints over creating and
remembering another username and password.

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2. Global enterprises will adopt multiple international data
centers to remain compliant.
2014 saw the mandate that all Russian citizens’ data must be stored within
Russian borders. 2015 saw the invalidation of the EU-US Safe Harbor
agreement. And 2016 will see leading enterprises adopt multiple data
centers across the globe to adhere to localized data privacy regulations.
Additionally, with international enterprises now required to manage their
users’ data in multiple geographies and support unique scenarios like users
moving from one region to another, on-premises storage of consumer data
is becoming increasingly costly and unfeasible. The growing need to comply
with new and evolving regional data regulations will also drive businesses’
on-going migration to cloud-based identity and data repositories.
3. Data brokers’ revenues will decline due to brands focusing
on first-party data.
Data brokers have built a multi-billion dollar industry dedicated to sourcing
and selling consumer information from a variety of places, including surveys
and questionnaires, public records like voter documentation, enterprise
insights from loyalty programs and more. However, modern brands are
finding that these third-party consumer profiles are often outdated, limited to
device-specific insights and simply inaccurate due to being pieced together
from a variety of disparate sources.

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Uncertainties regarding the accuracy, completeness and origins of this
data make it nearly impossible for marketers to know exactly who they’re
reaching and to effectively measure the success of their campaigns, causing
more brands to turn to first-party data. Because it is collected directly from
customers and takes multi-device activities into account, first-party data is
much more reliable than third-party data.
In addition to being essentially free to collect, first-party data lowers campaign
costs by enabling marketers to target audiences with highly relevant
messaging. This minimizes the number of impressions it takes for users to
engage and driving conversions at a faster and higher rate. For these key
reasons, we predict that 2016 will be the year that data broker revenues begin
to decline.
4. Security and customer
experience will converge.
For marketers to create relevant user
experiences, they must be able to
identify and connect with customers as
they move across today’s landscape
of channels and connected devices.
However, user tolerance for security
barriers like passwords and CAPTCHA
is diminishing, causing them to abandon
these barriers in search of newer and
more convenient experiences.
To continue to earn access to customer identities and data, companies must
deliver the frictionless registration and engagement processes that users
expect. This is a new concept for IT leaders accustomed to focusing on
captive employees, who have no choice but to deal with latency and strict
authentication protocols when it comes to internal business systems.
We believe that, with continued development for biometric forms of
authentication and API-focused security, for example, 2016 will find more
leading brands striking a balance between usability and security, adopting the
tools needed to maximize frictionless user experiences while minimizing risk.

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5. The importance of the IDoT will eclipse fascination with the IoT.
Cisco projects that the Internet of Things (IoT) is a $14 trillion revenue
opportunity, making smart, connected products—and the technologies
that make them tick— drivers of huge new growth opportunities. However,
according to Gartner, Inc1
, “Managing identities and access is critical to the
success of the Internet of Things,” making the Identity of Things, or IDoT, the
new focus of the IoT.
The IDoT is based on the principle that all entities in the IoT ecosystem—
including people, apps, services and connected things—have identities
comprised of identifiers and their attributes, and that those identities define
relationships between every entity. Managing the data that flows between
these identities requires an identity management solution that unifies every
entity in the system—a core requirement for businesses looking to capitalize
on the IoT in 2016.
Learn More
To learn how Gigya can help your business navigate the future of
customer identity, visit www.gigya.com or call us at 650.353.7230.
1
Gartner, Press Release, February, 2015, http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/2985717

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The Trusted Platform for
Identity-Driven Relationships
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Gigya-2016-Identity-Predictions-White Paper-201512
About Gigya
Gigya’s Customer Identity Management Platform helps companies build
better customer relationships by turning unknown visitors into known, loy-
al and engaged customers. With Gigya’s technology, businesses increase
registrations and identify customers across devices, consolidate data into
rich customer profiles, and provide better service, products and experi-
ences by integrating data into marketing and service applications.
Gigya’s platform was designed from the ground up for social identities,
mobile devices, consumer privacy and modern marketing. Gigya provides
developers with the APIs they need to easily build and maintain secure
and scalable registration, authentication, profile management, data analyt-
ics and third-party integrations.
More than 700 of the world’s leading businesses such as Fox, Forbes, and
Verizon rely on Gigya to build identity-driven relationships and to provide
scalable, secure Customer Identity Management.
To learn how Gigya can help your business manage customer identities,
visit gigya.com, or call us at 650.353.7230.