Wave2 Media Solutions Announces New Digital Direction for Obituaries

By: Press Release | Wave2 Media Solutions

Wave2 Media Solutions has announced the release of its iPublish AdPortal Digital Obituary Platform consisting of its industry leading self-service AdPortal Obituaries and AdPortal Digital Obits with Lasting Memories. It is now available to all existing AdPortal customers and new customers. Several Wave2 customers have already licensed AdPortal Digital Obituaries to instantly display their print obits on their websites with Lasting Memories —a memorial website application bundled with the digital platform. It utilizes social media based protocol enabling a family to manage their personalized website memorializing a loved one forever. “All of our AdPortal Obits customers can easily upgrade to our new digital solution.” said Brian Gorman, Wave2’s Vice President of Sales. “This provides our customers with a very quick and easy way to increase their obits revenue by as much as 40 percent.

Along with Gannett who utilize AdPortal Obits across 70 markets for 100 percent of their order entry, Wave2 is now running projects with BH Media and GateHouse Media that will more than double its existing customer base totaling over 200 AdPortal Obit sites by Q2, 2015. In 2014 Wave2 has already processed in excess of 300,000 print obituaries along with a digital listing and by next year that figure will increase to over 500,000. Wave2’s AdPortal Obits platform will be used to process 25 percent of all obituaries in the community publishing market, exceeding any other solutions provider in North America by a sizeable margin. Commenting further, Gorman stated, “This is a testament to the success of the AdPortal platform. Within our customer base they have been renewing their agreements at a 99 percent rate year to year which is driving our market share.

After 5 years of processing print and digital obituaries, Wave2 decided to enhance their AdPortalObituaries platform. Print obituaries are still a very predictable and steady revenue stream for community publishers. Funeral homes are important and play a crucial role in ordering the obituary for the family. They are now investing in websites, creating their own digital obits listings and looking for ways to offer better services to the families and communities they serve.Additionally, families are using Facebook as an alternative to both the print obituary and the digital listing on the newspaper’s website. These developments pose a threat to a newspaper’s obituary business as well as presenting an opportunity.

Wave2 now offers community publishers a very attractive digital solution that doesn’t have to be tied to their print circulation. Wave2’s Digital Obituary Platform extends a community publisher’s reach beyond their print circulation. Publishers are packaging it as both a digital offering only and in a package as part of the print sale, which is enhancing their funeral home partner relationships. “We advise publisher partners to stay very close to their funeral home advertisers and not take them or their business for granted. Our solution enables publishers to proactively introduce a digital solution to the market rather than passively waiting for funeral homes to find their own-which they will,” said Gorman.

The iPublish AdPortal Digital Obituaries Platform is a single license including all three modules and priced very aggressively for the publisher with no setup, transaction or hosting fees. The average Wave2 customer realizes a 300-400 percent ROI every year they use the software. With these new digital enhancements the ROI for publishers will increase to an even higher return.