After months of discussion, paywall tech companies Tinypass and Piano Media announced a merger on Tuesday, creating Piano, a new SaaS company specializing in advanced media business processes and paywall optimization software. The merger is effective immediately.
“Digital media businesses are increasingly focused on monetizing their loyal users,” said Trevor Kaufman, former Tinypass CEO, in a press release about the merger. Kaufman will run the new operation.
“It’s obvious to everyone in our industry that the display-advertising-only model for content is broken. Combining Piano Media and Tinypass puts us in an incredible position, not only to continue to address the fundamental software challenges faced by the media business – like managing users, getting good data, and tracking entitlements across the web, apps, and traditional media – but to help them innovate entirely new models as well,” added Kaufman.Piano Media’s former CEO Kelly Leach will stay on as a senior advisor and will join Piano’s board.”Audience intelligence and optimization are critical elements of content monetization. By joining forces, the combined company is able to offer media companies the most comprehensive, effective and user-friendly platform in the industry. We look forward to this next chapter in our development,” said Leach.Operating on more than 1,200 sites around the world, Piano’s clients include News Corp, The McClatchy Co., The EW Scripps Company, The Post Media Company, IBT Media, NBC Universal, CNBC Pro, and Time Inc. In May, Time Inc. announced its first metered paywall on its Entertainment Weekly site, the first of many metered paywalls coming to the company’s media sites.Insider Take:Industry insiders like Newsonomics’ Ken Doctor predicted the merger last month. Doctor said a consolidated company could be more efficient, but he questioned whether media companies would be open to the innovation necessary to continue growth. That’s something the new Piano will have to figure out, but as a single unit, the company has a better chance of getting media groups – and other subscription-based organizations – on board than either company had individually.In an interview with Laura Owen for Nieman Lab, Kaufman did not seem daunted by this task. Instead, he is seeing a shift in how publishers think about paywalls.”Now, I think, publishers are getting more sophisticated,” Kaufman told Owen. “They have lots of different levels of engagement and commitment, and their job is to maximize value at every stage of the funnel and figure out how to move users through. They’re thinking about registered users, newsletter subscribers, users who might give gift subscriptions. It’s more elaborate and more nuanced.”Perhaps as the paywall world gets smaller with fewer players, the publishing world will get larger, finding more creative, adaptable subscription models to satisfy a younger, more mobile audience.
