RSSComScore: Hulu viewership skyrockets
By Tim Conneally | Published March 25, 2009, 3:32 PM
Maybe it was thanks to its surprisingly popular Super Bowl commercial featuring an alien Alec Baldwin, or maybe it's thanks to its clean interface and ever-growing library of content, but Hulu's popularity exploded last month.
According to comScore's Video Metrix service, Hulu became the fourth most-viewed video site on the Internet, bypassing Microsoft, Viacom, and AOL sites, and snaring a 2.5% share of the market. The NBC-News Corp. joint venture climbed two positions in the ranking and experienced a 42% increase in views in February. The majority of the growth (33%) took place after the Super Bowl advertisement began running.
Google's YouTube, of course, continues to dominate this category with nearly 41% of the market and stands nearly 38% ahead of its nearest competitor, Fox Interactive, which holds only 3.5% market share according to views.
But in this business, it's not only about views, it's also about a platform's ability to generate ad revenue, and that is where Hulu has a potential runaway lead over YouTube. Even though YouTube has more unique views and more clicks per viewer, the majority of the content is amateur-made and offers nearly nothing in the way of advertisement. Hulu, as some 333 million viewers now know, is all professional content with advertisements. Over 130 content providers have submitted to the site more than 1,000 television episodes and full-length movies.
With 75.5% of the online populace watching an average of 5 hours of streaming video (or over 13 billion clicks), the demand for a service like Hulu is rock solid.
And the site continues to expand. Newly-hired executive Johannes Larcher joined Hulu this week to lead the site's expansion into international markets. This push was punctuated by last night's live stream of President Barack Obama's second prime-time news conference that was open to international audiences on Hulu.
I've been impressed at how those involved in the Hulu joint venture actually managed to not screw it up. They came up with a surprisingly decent site, which is even nicer if you are running an effective ad blocker.
Yeah, it sucks that you can't view it outside of the US, but the business of selling international distribution rights is vital for many programs. Having a worldwide on-demand source would severely devalue these rights in the eyes of the networks. Particularly as they don't necessarily follow the same release schedules. Right now, the primary concern is to make the programming viable on TV where to biggest revenue is. The same may apply to classics as well with the addition of DVD distribution and sales.
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|Certainly the best place to watch family guy :P although I ended up watching Robocop 1 and 2 there. Bit choppy video from time to time though
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|2.5% market share.....Staggering!
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|yey! yet... i'm not excited, why? i'm in canada and the internet should not be broken up into geographic pieces all restricted from one another
until hulu opens up, i'll oppose it, even local sites which offer up content yet block other countries i oppose, everyone should
copyright should not make things that complicated you can't even make your own shows available, its broken and networks need to fix it, that and they are belittling what the internet is using their current methods, yet you all sit back and support it? i've got to ask, whats wrong with you
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|ArtfulDodga:
It's even weirder than that when there are old shows that spontaneously disappear. I was watching "Galactica 1980" for kicks (yes, it was as goofy as I remember) and noticed the episodes suddenly had "Expires in 3 days". Why in the world is a 30 year old show suddenly expiring? The networks come up with all these goofy limitations many of which don't seem to make any sense (although are probably some bean-counter's way of maximizing future profit potential).
I think Hulu provides a good service. Their advertising is a very tolerable level, and most of the ads they are show are actually good, memorable ads, as opposed to the typical TV ad which seems targeted to be as stupid and annoying as possible. In my case, TV ads were more likely to make me deliberately avoid a product simply because the advertising was so offensive or annoying. I've seen very few of these kinds of ads on Hulu. The quantity of advertising is also extremely reasonable. I find no reason to try to skip ads, (which I doubt is possible), or mute them (since they aren't loud and stupid). This is what television used to be like, and once you've been away from regular TV for a while, you realize how incredibly loud, obnoxious and overbearing advertising really is. Hulu reins it back to a level that even a grouchy ad-hater like me finds perfectly tolerable. It is well worth seeing the ads to watch these shows, something that hasn't been true on "regular" TV for many years.
I understand your frustrations with lack of support in Canada, and I suspect, like the ridiculous situation with "Galactica 1980" that the content providers are placing stupid, capricious restrictions (hey, that's the way they think), and it's really not Hulu to blame.
I also suspect Hulu will not last. As a user, I find it too good to be true. A content medium that actually provides value and doesn't treat the consumer with contempt? In America? It's a wonder really, and I honestly expect to see it disappear any day. However, until such a time comes, I will continue to enjoy using it, and yes, even the ads. Hey, I turned satellite off years ago, and Hulu perfectly fills the gap left by using Netflix and buying certain shows on DVD. Plus, it's a real gas to watch those old classics like "Time Tunnel", some of which are shows I would have never bothered with but discovered are really fun.
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|The content owners make Hulu expire shows because they think if the shows were always available online people would not buy them on DVD. It's annoying, but there might be some truth to it.
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