A registration wall requires viewers to create or sign into an account before watching, without necessarily charging them. It sits between fully open access and a hard paywall: the price of entry is data and identity rather than money.
It is valuable even for free and ad-supported services because a known user enables personalization, cross-device continuity, frequency capping, better ad targeting (and CPMs), and a relationship that can later convert to a subscription. The trade-off is friction - every gate suppresses some viewers - so placement and timing of the reg wall are tuned carefully against the value the captured identity provides.
