Tony Uphoff has led a storied career, advancing from a VP at Ziff Davis early on to CEO positions at CMP Media (InformationWeek), VNU Media (The Hollywood Reporter), UBM TechWeb, Business.com, and Thomas—where he orchestrated that company’s sale to Xometry for $300 million.
In late 2023, he went in a different direction, becoming CEO of Pipeline 360, a B2B marketing company specializing in branded demand.
“All marketing has become performance marketing,” Uphoff told SIIA Media Alert last week. “And we should just admit that. And one of the concepts that we built out on was that we believe there’s going to be a convergence between brand and demand advertising and marketing. So we built a solution we call branded demand.”
Asked if this also can become a solution for B2B media, Uphoff said that it’s hard to tell.
“When I look at many of the B2B media industry events, speakers are leading sessions on how they are growing their marketing services revenues with demand generation,” Uphoff said. “Having sat through dozens of presentations, I can tell you that Marketing Services, featuring content studios with performance marketing and demand generation solutions, are prominently featured as core ‘growth drivers.’
“The industry needs to take a more enlightened point of view on digital business models and understand that performance marketing and demand generation have become the drivers of growth and as such need to be understood alongside what some consider traditional content businesses.”
At Thomas, Uphoff redefined the successful directory, moving the B2B publisher into the data-platform space. He focused early on expanding the registered users for the core product, Thomasnet.com. The database grew quickly, thanks to an emphasis on the user experience and a variety of extensions. The company also launched the Thomas Industry Update, a daily newsletter that greatly increased its audience—with much of the content related to directory listings.
Now at Pipeline 360, he is again changing the game, helping to redefine lead- and demand-gen.
Uphoff complimented the work that SIIA Media is doing and hopes there will be a convergence in the future with what he’s doing at Pipeline 360. When he decided not to run another traditional B2B media company, but “to really accelerate the build-out and growth of a Demand-as-a-Service business,” he knew it might be confusing to some. But he also knew that he’s always had a good feel for the next big thing.
“I’ve had the remarkable opportunity to literally grow up at the intersection of technology and media, and this has given me a ringside seat at every major market transition over the last 30 years,” Uphoff said. “I don’t know that I have any innate talent other than I know a market transition when I feel one coming on because I’ve seen so many. And that really is when a disruptive technology meets demographic shifts and business trends, and something new is going to happen.
“We believe the dynamics in B2B marketing today suggest there will be some significant changes, including a consolidation of suppliers and the acceleration of new models like Demand-as-a-Service.”
Notes from B2BMX
Uphoff had just returned from the B2BMX West 2025 conference, where Erica Perng, Pipeline 360’s senior director, head of corporate communications, addressed five key takeaways after watching his talk there. The first three concerned marketers—how they have to do more with less, leverage AI, and process so much data. I asked Uphoff about the fourth one: “Content matters more than ever, but it’s so hard to get right.” Uphoff amplified the “so hard to get right.”
“As we look at the world through the lens of what we do at Pipeline 360, our customers spend roughly 45 cents of every dollar on demand generation on content. I’m talking about content marketing. So they’re developing white papers or hiring a firm to do it. And up until very recently we weren’t involved in content. But we would be asked almost daily, ‘Do you guys provide content services?’”
To that end, Pipeline 360 just announced that it would add content services through a partnership model with The Expert Network. Uphoff sees data and AI playing a huge role in personalizing the content they will create.
“That’s where a lot of these amazing new tools are really going to pay dividends,” he said. “If you take an asset that is valuable to an audience—let’s call it a white paper—you then have the ability to customize and personalize it, and break it into distinctive pieces. It could become a LinkedIn post, a podcast ad. We’re not going to throw a light switch though and magically all this technology is going to be well used.
“But this idea of B2B becoming more thoughtful about the content that we either create or have created, and really understanding—partly from a journalistic point of view and partly from a metrics one—that it actually solves the needs of the individuals and the buying groups that we’re targeting.”
The fifth takeaway was, “Reaching millennials is no longer optional.” Uphoff recalled his younger days at Ziff Davis and when he was named publisher of Information Week. People were astounded that he could be in his mid-30s and a publisher already.
“It was a different era,” he said. ”Then in 2017, for the first time in history, a generation as large as the previously largest generation was created. The millennials were now in the workforce at the same time as the baby boomers—an analog-native generation and a digital-native generation. And in many cases, particularly with the millennials, the expectations are going to be a bit different. And that puts a lot of pressure on marketers.
“Over half of B2B buying groups today are led by millennials,” Uphoff continued. “It’s not to say baby boomers aren’t still involved. But it’s a clarion call for marketers to understand. That doesn’t mean we have to play hip music or do something out of character. But if this generation is clearly raising its hand with its digital footprints and telling us this is the way I take in information, we have to listen.”
In addition, Uphoff would like to see that next generation working more for B2B media and marketing. “We’re not doing enough to get them fired up,” he said.
