We’re thrilled to bring our two companies together and want to take this opportunity to explain why this merger holds such tremendous potential.   

Rich History: Over A Decade In the Making

To grasp why this union is so strategic, it’s important to explore how each company has taken two distinct yet complementary approaches to the video market over the past decade.

First, let’s talk about JW Player (JWP). JWP initially gained traction among developers with its enormously popular open source video player, the JW Player. This allowed it to organically build a massive customer footprint and ultimately paved the way for its transformation from a video player to one of the most widely-adopted video streaming and technology platforms in the world. Its value prop was twofold: (i) to provide robust video workflows and streaming technology at global scale and (ii) to help customers grow their revenue by leveraging billions of daily unique contextual and consumption data signals across a massive customer footprint. 

Connatix initially devoted itself to directly monetizing publishers’ video inventory. Using a scrappy, yet innovative approach, Connatix built a rapidly-growing direct and programmatic video advertising business, with a compelling value proposition for advertisers. Connatix’s tech stack helps publishers create, deliver and monetize streaming video, while also providing advertisers with premium video inventory and a collection of data intelligence solutions including Deep Contextualand predictive audience targeting.

The Evolving Marketplace

While both companies were driving value to our customers individually, seismic changes have been taking place in the digital video marketplace that create an opportunity to drive even greater success together. Consumers are increasingly cutting the cord in favor of CTV and streaming services, leading to rapid shifts in global advertising spend and the emergence of new direct-to-consumer subscription and pay-per-view offerings. Publishers are paying the price for these shifts, seeing flattening traffic that has reinforced the need for engaging content and ad-generated revenue streams. And finally, new video-based monetization opportunities have exploded onto the scene, namely video commerce, which is a $918B market in 2024 and will become massively important to all media companies in the coming years. 

These significant shifts for broadcasters, publishers and advertisers require a partner capable of helping them adapt to evolving industry needs while maximizing revenue. 

The Combined Value

When JWP and Connatix started discussing a potential partnership, three key things became clear. First, we shared a similar mission – to deliver the best possible experience across screens while helping our customers connect with their audiences anywhere, anytime, and maximizing revenue. Second, our views of the market were practically identical: broadcasters, publishers and advertisers’ businesses are changing and a new solution is vital. And third, the convergence of our products and team expertise presented a unique opportunity to help our customers adapt to industry shifts by delivering the best technology and monetization solutions in a single unified platform. 

What This Means for Our Customers

Fast-forward to today, we’re proud to unite as one, bringing the most innovative minds in video together to usher in a new era for digital video. JWP Connatix is committed to providing the highest quality experience for our customers and their viewers. Our capability to stream billions of video minutes and impressions to any screen remains a fundamental part of our value proposition. We will continue to enhance our platform to equip our customers with the tools and insights they need to maximize revenue. Alongside our advanced platform and unique data, we have an expert team to support our customers throughout their journey.

JWP Connatix is now streaming, are you ready? Reach out to us to learn more about what’s next!

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However, once someone clicks play, an advertiser has only a matter of seconds to win or lose the attention pointed towards the accompanying video. This is where a nanosecond of invaluable opportunity lies for video advertisers.

An ad that compliments the content a viewer is seeking in that brief moment of intent can be more impactful than reaching that same viewer later on when they’re streaming their favorite shows to unwind.

JWP saw that impact when we partnered with Mars for an M&M’s contextual video campaign.  Exposure to ads that were placed with JWP’s proprietary contextual targeting drove more offline purchases than any other video PMP partner, or any video on the open exchange (Nielsen Catalina data). This underscores the effectiveness of timely, relevant ad placements.

What is Contextual Video Advertising?

Contextual video advertising is the science of aligning the video ad with the content in the video, therefore tapping into the mindset of the viewer at the moment of relevance.

Intent is signaled at the video level, which improves accuracy when it comes to ad placement. In fact, by placing your video within contextually relevant content, you’re nearly doubling your chances of brand recall and purchase intent.

It’s the most ethical and noninvasive way to target the psyche of an individual. Advancements in technology and AI, like the ones made at JWP, allow for a deeper analysis of video and content consumption signals making this a powerful targeting tool in a post-cookie, pro-privacy era.

Through a contextual lens, a viewer is not being approached as a consumer, or a data driven sum of past online behavior. A contextual video ad impression is targeting a curiosity, a feeling, or an interest. This is far more privacy conscious than other forms of advertising, such as cookies.

3 Reasons Why Brands Should Prioritize Contextual Video Ad Alignment

Let’s explore reasons why contextual ad alignment far transcends its perception as a default alternative to audience data targeting. 

1. Impact to Drive Results

Contextually Relevant Video Ads Receive Higher Engagement and Purchase Intent 

If a video advertisement is relevant to the video the viewer is watching, they are more likely to watch the ad to completion. There is increasingly more data proving out the power and effectiveness of a contextually relevant strategy.

As the video player, JWP has measured viewership correlation between the video ad content and the video itself to find that relevant ads get higher video completion rates and viewability metrics than other ads on the same video. A leading global CPG brand at Dentsu determined that JWP’s contextual video campaigns consistently achieved the highest viewability on completion of the ad (VOC) 2x their goal. Google reports that relevant video ads get 3X times more attention than average video ads. 

And, as mentioned above, M&M’s was able to drive more offline purchases (vs other PMP’s and video on the open exchange) with JWP’s contextual targeting 

2. Contextual Accuracy Protects Brands 

When it comes to brand safety and brand suitability, ad placement is critical. A brand’s credibility and trust with consumers can take years to build, and be compromised in an instant with poor ad alignment.

For this reason, transparency of content is essential, and the title, keywords, or classification is not enough. JWP is in a unique position because it powers more video on the open internet than any other player.

JWP specializes in editorially produced journalistic videos, as well as studio produced entertainment videos. When you take a premium environment and then have the technology to evaluate the specifics of the content itself, advertisers are given a powerful contextual tool to ensure a safe and suitable location for their brand.       

Considering Reviews

Oftentimes in video, product reviews, movie reviews, gaming reviews don’t reveal if they are positive or negative in the title. The publisher wants to entice the viewer to watch the video to find out. JWP can recognize the tonality of the review as positive or negative, to help brands properly align, conquest, or avoid depending on the content.

Additionally, JWP can decipher good news on news sites while deterministically excluding bad news.

3. Contextual Video Advertising Protects Viewer Privacy

Contextual advertising stands out as both privacy-safe and ethical, particularly in its treatment of user data. Unlike methods that rely on tracking individual behavior over time, this method aligns with current data protection regulations and consumer expectations for privacy. By focusing on the context rather than the consumer, it ensures a balance between personalized marketing and privacy protection, setting a standard for ethical advertising practices.

As you can see from the data below advertisers can still achieve reach while protecting viewer privacy. Top contextual content categories like Food and Drink achieve billions of impressions. And, they can do it in an environment of high viewability with strong completion rates ensuring the highest performance possible.  

To learn more about contextual video ad targeting visit our advertisers webpage. For a short time, we are offering new clients the ability to get a free brand lift study on the completion of their ad campaign with JWP.  

About JWP

JWP is the leading video player on the open web. Since 2004, JWP has helped premium publishers monetize their video with first to market video technology. Today, JWP is a global leader, delivering over 100 Billion monthly video impressions in the US alone. JWP captures unique contextual and video engagement data for advertisers. Get in touch to contextually scale across this premium, previously siloed, and valuable online video ecosystem.

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With so much economic uneasiness, strategic realignment, and technological upheaval, the only certainty is that whichever organizations acclimate to the current environment the quickest will emerge on top.

Amidst this backdrop, JW Player (JWP) commissioned Forrester Consulting to conduct a Total Economic Impact (TEI) study with SNY (SportsNet New York) and examine the potential return on investment (ROI) broadcasters may realize by deploying JW Player. This process was carried out by JWP experts, SNY team members, and Forrester researchers.

Through a rigorous process of interviewing, financial modeling, projecting, and due diligence, JWP and Forrester constructed a framework to prove the potential financial impact on similar organizations over a three-year period. A thorough investigation of the costs, benefits, and risks associated uncovered overwhelmingly positive results.

Background

Prior to working with JWP, SNY was entangled in a clunky video solution that drastically hampered workflows while lacking the analytical capabilities to uncover valuable insights. Monetization opportunities were limited due to relying on third-party advertising partnerships, while SNY’s team was virtually in the dark as to understanding viewer engagement and retention metrics.

Following a prolonged period of inefficiency, the organization decided it was time to pivot to an end-to-end online video platform (OVP) that was able to exceed their audience’s dynamic consumption needs.

When evaluating potential vendors, SNY had stringent requirements for their next video partner, including:

• All-in-one platform designed to scale
• Maximize ad revenue
• Reduce time to market for video production while enhancing the current video workflow
• Produce a high-quality, high-speed video player with autoplay functionality that easily integrates with the organizations APIs
• Enhanced viewer data and analytics
• Unparalleled customer service and technical expertise

JWP’s OVP checked all the boxes and proved to be the turnkey solution SNY desperately needed. Once the terms were settled, JWP began deployment and a dynamic relationship was underway.

Key findings

After a 3-year period, it was clear that SNY’s decision to partner with JWP was a fruitful one.

135% ROI over 3 years

SNY increased ad revenue by $2.9 million through improvements in audience targeting, with growth in the number of ad impressions of 190% in Year 1 and 150% in Years 2 and 3. The scale of video inventory to be sold for advertisement also increased from 10% to 100%. These gains result in a three-year risk adjusted PV of $2.9 million.

When factoring in the costs of deployment (platform fee, training, strategy, development, maintenance), the end result is an increase in ROI of 135% over a 3 year period and a net present value (NPV) of $1.76M.

Nearly double video production capacity and workflow efficiency

Production capacity increased by 83% and workflow efficiency increased by 93%, respectively. The end-to end workflow allowed the organization’s video team to decrease broadcast time from 30 minutes to 2 minutes, while increasing the number of videos broadcasted per month from 5 to 30. Workflow efficiency gains result in a three-year risk adjusted PV of $103,600.

Improved video production uptime by 95% from faster service request response

SNY realizes significant time savings during the broadcasting process due to JW Player’s responsiveness to real-time video service requests. With JW Player, average response time decreases considerably. Improved production uptime results in a three-year risk adjusted PV of $19,400.

Improved agility and faster insights through an intuitive platform

The interviewees noted that the tool and accompanying dashboards across all capabilities in the JW platform are user-friendly and require little internal training. Further, the metadata infrastructure allowed internal stakeholders to easily aggregate data across multiple audiences for advertisers.

JWP’s formula for success for broadcasters

Forrester’s TEI report showcases the potential ROI broadcasters can expect by working with JWP, relying on SNY as a case study. The full report explains in meticulous detail how the solutions devised by JWP can be applied to broadcasters of any size, with heaps of data to support this assertion.

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