But because things are changing so fast and technology is so critical, we welcome any chance to take a look at media tech from different perspectives. We recently caught up with Zack McCann, director of brand messaging and implementation at MediaOS, a company that can safely be described as far more than just a tech stack.
Zack McCann.
Instead, the company’s website says, it’s an “all-in-one CRM magazine publishing software for media and associations. It combines your CRM, ad delivery software, subscription management, ad sales, production, and email newsletters. Easily manage sales, automate accounting and delivery, and engage readers—all in one powerful platform.”
MediaOS offers 21 distinct systems in a single platform, making it simple, the company says, to leverage data, unearth new monetization techniques, and drive serious growth.
Here’s an edited transcript of our conversation with Zack.
Zack McCann: MediaOS is built for anyone selling advertising. We’ve worked with city-regional, niche media, associations—heck we’ve even had a customer who specialized in selling advertising on the lines in parking lots! We’ve built a solution that is intended to be as close as you can get to a one-stop shop for publishers. Whether it’s using our CRM, boosting your email newsletter list by nearly 20x, improving your traffic through a performance-focused website refresh, or any number of the solutions that we provide—we’re trying to take the mystery out of technology and make it easier than ever for publishers to face the digital future.
Fox Tales: Does MediaOS view its primary customer sweet spot as magazines? Digital publishers? Newspapers?
McCann: We work in all three of those verticals! For magazines, we make building out your print magazine easy with our Flat Plan tool. For digital publishers we fully integrate with WordPress to allow content to flow seamlessly between your site and newsletters. And for newspapers we make classifieds and distribution simple and understandable, and are even making digital classifieds available through our Audience Enhancement tool.
Fox Tales: Tell us about the genesis of MediaOS. When was it founded? By whom and why?
McCann: Joel Pape is our CEO and founder. He’s been working in the publishing industry for over a decade. He first founded Subscription Genius, which at one time was the largest subscription-fulfillment house in the United States. That rolled into Ad Sales Genius, a robust CRM+ tool that allowed for all ad sales operations to flow in one software. As we grew, we decided to try our hand at publishing. After several painstaking weeks of research, we found that the technology available just didn’t play nicely together. As technologists, we felt a responsibility to use our experience to build a tech stack that all flowed into one unified audience database. That would allow publishers to take all of the awesome data that their audience was feeding them and activate it to provide better content, sell smarter advertising and lead towards greater revenue.
Fox Tales: What do you see as the primary going-forward tech need for media companies? Your customers?
McCann: Data. Data, data, data. First-party data is the absolute gold-standard that all publishers should be striving for. We had a wonderful speaker, Guy Tasaka, from Tasaka Digital, at our MediaOS Revenue Summit back in October. He said “Data is the new oil,” and we could not agree more. Your content and your connection with your audience is your superpower, and if you aren’t learning from the information your audience is freely providing to you, then you’re fighting an already tough battle with one hand tied behind your back. Now more than ever it’s essential for publishers to stop spending their time fighting their tech stack and instead use that time to find new ways to increase revenue.
Fox Tales: BONUS: Tell us about the role of companies like Fox Associates in helping your customers succeed.
McCann: We love companies who are looking for innovative ways to play in the media space, so it’s no surprise that we love the work that Fox Associates does. You have to feel like you have a partner with a plan when you’re navigating the maze that is publishing in 2024.