Paywall providers Piano Media and Tinypass are merging to create a business serving more than 1,200 media companies including NBC Universal, Time Inc and News Corp.
The merger marks a further consolidation of the market for helping media companies get their users to pay for content online. Piano, originally founded in Slovakia, acquired US company Press+ last Autumn in a deal reportedly worth $45m (£29m) to create the world’s largest provider of paywalls.
Current Tinypass chief executive Trevor Kaufman will lead the new company, which will be called Piano.
Piano Media’s chief executive Kelly Leach – the former Dow Jones managing director for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa who took over the company last September – will stay on in an advisory role and join the new company’s board.
As well as providing technology that allows media companies to charge for access, Piano and Tinypass provide ways for those companies to collect and use data to make more money from advertising online.
“Digital media businesses are increasingly focused on monetising their loyal users,” said Kaufman. “Joining Tinypass with Piano Media to form Piano and globally standardising on our new VX platform will provide publishers and media companies with the most effective and usable monetisation and analytics tools available.”
