The Paid Content Giants: Piano Media And Press+ Join Forces
Tena Šojer
9. 9. 2014.
Two of the largest paid content solution providers, Press+ and Piano Media, are joining forces to sell software worldwide and accelerate the global shift to digital subscription models. The two media giants will expand the product feature set to better meet the rapidly evolving needs of publishers under the watch of Kelly Leach, who will act as the new CEO of the combined companies.
Two of the largest paid content solution providers, Press+ and Piano Media, are joining forces to sell software worldwide and accelerate the global shift to digital subscription models. The two media giants will expand the product feature set to better meet the rapidly evolving needs of publishers under the watch of Kelly Leach, who will act as the new CEO of the combined companies.
Press+ was founded in 2009 and pioneered the use of the “metered access model”, and entered the paid content market in 2011 with its national subscription solution in Europe, whereas Piano focuses on advanced user analytics and conversion consulting to increase subscriber retention.
The company was acquired by a group of investors Capital comprising Gründerfonds (Austria), Neulogy Ventures (Slovakia) and North Base Media (USA), led by 3TS.
Pekka Mäki, Managing Partner of 3TS, believes that this merger will benefit the clients:
Paid content has enormous growth potential around the world. We saw an opportunity to acquire Press+ through Piano Media, our existing portfolio company, consolidating the industry’s two largest players and enabling the combined entity to have unrivalled resources, technology, data and knowledge to help clients further build new sources of revenue.
Kelly Leach, the appointed CEO, helped develop and execute the digital-subscription strategy in place at Dow Jones’ flagship newspaper, The Wall Street Journal, and has great experience in content monetization:
While at Dow Jones I came to understand that the opportunity for the publishing industry to monetize its digital content is immense, I’m excited to head a company that leads the field in content monetization and which has enormous growth potential.
Gordon Crovitz, founder of Press+ and former publisher of The Wall Street Journal notedthat Leach was instrumental in the growth of paid digital subscriptions in the Journal, and that she will be a great spokesperson for the dramatic trend among publishers of generating more revenues from readers than from advertisers.
