Digital media specialist buys AT Internet from France

It is invisible on the websites and services in which it works, but behind the scenes it is an important sales driver for media brands: the digital company Piano, founded in Vienna in 2013, helps brands such as CNBC, The Wall Street Journal, NBC Sports, Insider Inc., The Economist, Gannett, Le Parisien, TechCrunch, Penske Media, MIT Technology Review or The Telegraph on digital sales.

The software-as-a-service (SaaS) company’s offerings include A / B testing, content recommendations, ad blocking detection, audience segmentation, paywalls and many other tools that help media companies generate more sales online.

Acquisition in France

Piano is now strengthening itself around CEO Trevor Kaufman by purchasing 100 percent of the shares in the French company AT Internet. The French, founded in 1996, have specialized in data analysis for marketing applications. The 200 employees around CEO Mathieu Llorens will continue to look after their own customers, mainly in Europe, and use Piano’s branches in North America, Latin America, the Asia-Pacific region and Japan to reach more customers.

The transaction, in the course of which AT Internet boss Mathieu Llorens becomes a major shareholder of Piano, is financed with the help of investments by Updata Partners, Rittenhouse Ventures and Sixth Street Partners. For Piano it is not the first company to be bought. DMP Cxense (2019) and the Ukrainian e-mail platform Newzmate (2017) were also acquired, and the company founded in Vienna has also merged with the then US competitor Tinypass in 2015.

Merger of paywall providers: market leader Piano Media merges with Tinypass