Showing the current continued attraction of the online and mobile video industries for venture capital, JW Player has completed a $20 million Series C financing round.
JW Player claims to have pioneered video on the Web starting in 2008 as the world's first open source video player. Its flagship product, the JW Player, is currently live on more than two million sites with nine billion video streams to 900 million monthly unique viewers across all devices — smartphones, tablets and desktops. Indeed it claims that nearly 5% five of all video streams worldwide are delivered through the Player.
The company says that it will use the investment to further accelerate its rapid global growth, expand its sales, marketing, product and engineering initiatives, and add to its data-driven software-as-a-service platform. It hopes that the funding will enable enhanced video discovery, content monetisation and audience segmentation in the future.
"In a very short period of time, online video has moved from an experimental initiative for publishers to a core component of their business strategy," said Dave Otten, CEO and co-founder of JW Player. "Publishers are seeking video solutions that will help them grow and more-effectively monetise their audiences across mobile, desktop and OTT devices. At JW Player, we are squarely focused on leveraging our enormous footprint to create what we call the 'open video ecosystem', a network of connected players that provides publishers with unique insights around how people are engaging with video. This new round of financing will help us dramatically accelerate these efforts."
The round was led by Greycroft Growth and Greenspring Associates, and included participation from Cueball Capital and e.ventures.
"We are delighted to expand our partnership with JW Player," commented Ian Sigalow, co-founder and partner, Greycroft. "Since making our initial investment at the end of 2012, the company has executed incredibly well and, as a result of that, has seen its customer base and user footprint grow exponentially. With this new infusion of capital, JW Player now has additional resources to aggressively drive innovation and extend its leadership position in digital video."
