Over the last 15 years, the center of gravity in the media industry shifted. What was a print-centric business model that depended on content distributed in magazines transformed into primarily digital-facing media. Websites served up content, and enewsletters distributed news. The old days were no longer the same.
To be sure, many media operators still use print, and in many markets, including most associations, print remains dominant.
But the core of the media enterprise is technology, or, more specifically, the tech stack, which covers a variety of platforms, including a content-management system, a CRM, an ad portal, a programmatic ad-management system, and more. And as this evolution happened, the suppliers to the media industry shifted as well: Where 15 years ago it was printers, now it’s tech companies.
One of them is ePublishing, a software company that rolls many of the components of the tech stack into a single solution. That’s important, because those components need to communicate with each other. They need to be effectively integrated. In our recent travels, we crossed paths with the folks at ePublishing. We wanted to follow up for a more extended look at what they do. Here’s our conversation with CEO Mike Pirello.
Fox Tales: Give us a quick history of ePublishing. I remember Tom Chaffee from when I was running Folio:.
Mike Pirello: Tom is still around, he’s our chairman and focuses on acquisitions. While our core mission to empower publishers endures from ePublishing’s inception, we’ve significantly expanded our offerings and our reach to serve an even broader spectrum of publishers. Our growth has been strategically enhanced by three pivotal acquisitions:
- Ellington (2012): Ellington is a robust news-focused CMS, originally developed by a newspaper company, and notably, it was the foundational system that gave rise to the Django open-source platform. This acquisition bolstered our capabilities in the news-publishing sector.
- Syncronex (2018): This acquisition was personally impactful as it brought me into the ePublishing family. Syncronex had a proven track record of providing essential software solutions for news publishers, particularly in areas like distribution and paywall technology.
- Multipub (2022): A natural fit, Multipub joined us in 2022. ePublishing and Multipub had a history of successful collaboration with many shared publishers, targeting the same vital B2B and B2C markets. Multipub brings decades of expertise in subscription management, fulfillment, and accounting solutions.
Mike Pirello.
Through these strategic integrations, ePublishing now delivers a comprehensive solution that combines powerful content management, advanced AI capabilities, robust e-commerce features, and sophisticated audience management tools. We streamline editorial and audience workflows, amplify content delivery, diversify and grow revenue, and leverage a unified, data-first publishing ecosystem.
Fox Tales: ePublishing covers the gamut of media-company functions. It’s like an all-in-one tech stack. Is that a key to the value you bring to customers?
Pirello: Yes, while the individual solutions are great when they stand on their own, we have heavily invested over the last two years to make them best when combined. By integrating the CMS with fulfillment and distribution, we finally connected those two crucial, but previously isolated, data sets.
Fox Tales: Is there an element of your services that’s changing most rapidly? Tell us about where the innovation and disruption are happening for media companies.
Pirello: AI is the obvious answer. And we are adding capabilities in our solutions to take advantage of the tools. We also continue to enhance our solutions as digital becomes more dominant in the industry, while helping publishers keep print profitable.
Fox Tales: I’m guessing your Ask My Brand AI product is in that realm?
Pirello: Yes, it’s our latest product and is giving publishers new ways to monetize their content, without much effort. The solution is lightweight and powerful, so that all a publisher has to do is put the code in their site and we do the rest. Then, they can put in advertising or sponsorships wherever they like, providing answers just as a user is engaged in a conversation with the publishers’ content. And that’s the key, it’s only the publisher’s content, not mingled with the wider internet.
Fox Tales: You have an impressive number of industry partners across all your services. I would think that’s a key selling function as well?
Pirello: Yes, integration is a key component. Modern software must interact with other systems to be effective. We let that primarily be driven by the customer, based on their needs. Being flexible as partners change over time makes us a better provider to our customers.
Fox Tales: Tell us about your own career path to ePublishing.
Pirello: My career has been deeply rooted in the publishing and media-technology space, with a consistent focus on helping businesses thrive in the digital age. Before ePublishing, I was CEO at Syncronex, where we built technology to solve emerging problems. From handheld devices for delivery solutions to one of the early paywalls, I enjoy solving problems for customers. I started my career in telecom in sales management back when that industry was going through profound changes.
Fox Tales: Outsourced advertising partners like Fox Associates are essential to the media ad ecosystem. How does ePublishing interact with outsourced rep firms, and specifically with Fox?
Pirello: We haven’t done anything with rep firms at this point. We generally don’t get too involved with the ad side of things, other than the integration with ad systems with our CMS systems. But it’s certainly something we’re willing to explore.