Westborough Firm Drives Next Wave

Wave2 Media Solutions in Westborough is doing what many people might say is impossible: making a profit within the print/newspaper industry.

As daily newspapers continue to fold across the country, the Westborough-based media software company has found a way to drive revenues while helping the dailies cut expenses.

Wave2 Media produces self-publishing software that allows businesses to print their own advertisements, which Brian Gorman, vice president of sales, says is extremely appealing for daily newspapers since it eliminates a lot of the work in-house and renders deadlines obsolete.

“This puts the power of the publishing in the hands of the business person,” he said. “We all have spent 20 years or so in the publishing industries and have watched the technology develop. Once the Internet came along it became possible to conceive of this application.”

The software, which is used by the Boston Globe, allows businesses to create and approve their own ads. For example, the Globe uses the software for real estate listings. In the past, an ad rep from the Globe would work with real estate agents on putting together an accurate listing. With Wave2 Media’s software, the agents, in many cases, are able to build the listings themselves.

Despite the need for daily newspapers to drastically cut costs, Gorman believes that his company’s software solutions would benefit the newspaper industry, even if the country weren’t in the midst of a recession.

“We definitely have the right solution for them at this time, but if the economy were going really well, newspapers would still have the same challenges and our sales would probably be even higher,” he said, explaining that as technology continues to change, newspapers are evolving to target new readers and new advertisers. Wave2’s software helps them attract those new advertisers, because it does away with the traditional, time-consuming methods of creating and publishing print advertising.

As it stands, Gorman said the company’s bookings have more than tripled this year, with revenue more than doubling, and he expects that same kind of increase next year, as well.

“Right now we’ve only scratched the surface,” he said. “Once the self-service advertising market matures, which is still several years away, we’ll be looking to expand into other, more complex published media. It’s not something that only newspapers can use.”

Even though the company is succeeding, Gorman says the process of getting the business off the ground was not without its challenges, most notably, determining the initial direction to take.

“You have to make the right choices as far as the different opportunities that come along,” he said. “The potential of the technology is so varied, we could’ve gone in five different paths. We decided to get established in one vertical, get successful and then branch out.”