The company has been profitable since 2010, and raised $5 million in 2012 in a Series B round from Greycroft Partners and Cue Ball Capital.
Last October, Longtail Video changed its name to JW Player. Wijering joined the company as chief digital architect. Now more than 2 million websites use the JW Player, he says, and 9 billion video streams each month go through the video player. After Longtail Video acquired the player and ramped up distribution, the file downloads quickly increased to 20,000 per day, Otten says. Otten saw a chance to expand the video player’s distribution beyond the already frequent downloads by developers, who used it embed content on websites.
“YouTube used it as its original player,” he says. The JW video player was created in 2005 by Jeroen Wijering, Otten says, as an open source project. Longtail Video came across a video player that was already seeing significant use and moved to acquire it. The company soon realized that video players are key to the so-called last mile in video consumption, making them a crucial place for publishers and ad servers to connect with viewers. Otten says his company was founded in 2008 as Longtail Video and was looking for a way to help publishers monetize videos online. Bringing the JW Player 6.9 to Chromecast, Google’s streaming media player, he says, lets creators put their videos on connected televisions while offering additional content on “second screen” mobile devices. Otten says JW offers a player that works across all types of devices that publishers can use to simplify branding and ads. The player, he says, is used by video creators, universities, media companies, and Fortune 500 companies to publish video for online and mobile viewing. Never heard of the JW Player? CEO and co-founder Dave Otten says that it is possible you have already used it: “If you watch video off of YouTube, there’s a decent chance you’re watching it on a JW Player whether you knew it or not.” New York-based JW Player on Tuesday said its Web video player had come to Google Chromecast, with plans to stream content on more connected devices.