Since Connatix and JW Player first announced their merger in October, JWP Connatix – a temporary name for the newly joined companies – says things are going well at the six-month mark.
The two video monetization platforms see their tech stacks as complementary, hence the merger. JW Player renders videos on thousands of websites, while Connatix runs a video ad server and contextual ad platform.
Now, JWP Connatix wants to win dominance as a video monetization platform during what it considers to be an opportune moment.
When JWP Connatix talked to video publishers and sellers at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas last month, for example, “our biggest CES takeaway was that supply is starting to outweigh demand,” Brian Rifkin, co-founder and SVP of strategic partnerships for the merged company, told AdExchanger. Rifkin co-founded JW Player in 2007.
The shifting dynamics between buyers and sellers are behind the rising trend of end-to-end ad platforms. AdExchanger caught up with Rifkin to discuss JWP Connatix’s future.
AdExchanger: Where is JWP Connatix in its integration?
BRIAN RIFKIN: We closed the deal in October and spent the first few months integrating our product and engineering teams together. At this point, we’ve planned our road map for 2025 and we’re getting through the first phase of our plans.
The next steps for us are integrating our products and investing in new features for our combined tech stack.
Which specific features or products is JWP Connatix investing in?
We’re investing heavily in server-side ad insertion (SSAI) and contextual video technology to support customers in both broadcast and online video.
We have been building out our own SSAI technology to help publishers that are straddling both linear and streaming TV to more effectively monetize their content. Our SSAI is integrated with app programming interfaces, for example, so publishers can start working with us without first having to master a new, complicated tech stack.
As for contextual video, we have plenty of metadata on the actual content people are watching and the ads running against that content. Marketers care a lot about what their ads appear next to, so additional information about what’s actually happening on-screen is a really valuable data point that can increase the value of a publisher’s inventory.
Do JW Player and Connatix have overlapping clients?
Yes. Both companies work with clients among top-scoring publishers, so there was some overlap in our combined client base. But together we can say we have much larger market share as a video monetization platform.
For publishers that have been a customer of either JW Player or Connatix, we are trying to upsell clients on working with both platforms to improve their demand and monetization.
How have those conversations been going?
So far, we’ve been getting positive feedback from clients. They seem open to working with our offerings on both sides.
What’s next on the road map for JWP Connatix?
You’re going to see us integrating video technology from both sides. A new name is coming soon, too.
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