Piano today announced that it has been selected as the winner of the “Data Management Solution of the Year” award in the 2021 Data Breakthrough Awards program conducted by Data Breakthrough, an independent market intelligence organization that recognizes the top companies, technologies and products in the global data technology market today. 

“We are in the business of helping our clients turn data into personalized experiences across every customer interaction,” said Trevor Kaufman, CEO of Piano. “We are very proud of the work we have done over the last year to fully integrate our data management capabilities into our platform, providing the insights media companies and brands need to power their onsite targeting, content monetization or advertising.” 

The Data Breakthrough Awards is the premier awards program founded to recognize the data technology innovators, leaders and visionaries from around the world in a range of categories, including Data Analytics, Big Data, Business Intelligence, Data Storage and many more. The second annual Data Breakthrough Award program attracted more than 1,450 nominations from across the globe this year.

“2020 offered a surge in paid media subscriptions, largely attributed to COVID-19. By enabling media companies to apply real-time data to complex life cycles, Piano is helping publishers of all sizes maintain their success well beyond 2020,” said James Johnson, Managing Director, Data Breakthrough. “Congratulations to everyone at Piano for their hard work and winning our ‘Data Management Solution of the Year’ award.”

Piano dramatically increased its data collection, segment creation and activation capabilities via acquisition of Norway-based Cxense in 2019. These capabilities are focused solely on first- and zero-party data acquisition, allowing Piano to help clients future-proof themselves for a world without third-party cookies. The technology has since powered the campaigns of clients such as leading European media company Mediahuis, with whom Piano won a Digiday Marketing & Advertising Award Europe for Most Effective/Measurable Campaign of 2020. 

In late 2020, Piano fully integrated these data capabilities with its flagship product Composer, which empowers publishers and brands to orchestrate and optimize customer journeys across paywalls, content and personalized experiences. This integration provides industry-first customer journey design powered by machine learning, allowing clients to influence behaviors using zero- and first-party data so they can power personalized experiences in a world without third-party cookies. Piano’s most recent acquisition of AT Internet, a European leader in digital analytics and contextual data, will further bolster the breadth of data to which customers have access and tie it into experiences on both the web and within native applications.