Written by Chris Albrecht
Posted Wednesday, October 22, 2008 at 11:41 AM PT

Hulu Surpassed 140M Streams in Sept.

Hulu generated more than 142 million streams in September, as the premium content site continues its steady climb up the Nielsen VideoCensus rankings of the top brands on the web.

Hulu’s rise has been an strong and steady one. It had 1.7 million plays in February — while it was still in restricted beta. In April, the site cracked the top 10 for the first time ever, with more than 63 million plays. Then in July, Hulu broke the 100 million play-mark.

Nielsen doesn’t recommend doing month-to-month comparisons of its data as it says it’s constantly tweaking the system, but the overall picture is undeniable. In less than a year, the NBC/Fox joint venture has gone from nothing to No. 6, edging out established brands like ESPN and MTV. And the numbers for October should be even bigger as Hulu’s been one of the few places to catch those red-hot Sarah Palin SNL sketches, live-streams of the debates, and network shows that are still premiering.

Sure, YouTube may trounce the competition with big fancy numbers like 5.3 billion streams — but YouTube can reportedly only monetize 4 percent of its videos, whereas Hulu can monetize all of its content.

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Topic: Hitlines, Stats

Comments (5)

Megavideo is on this list?

Frank Sinton — 2:01 PM on October 22, 2008 Reply
There are some very tidbits in here. First, this states that the average YouTube viewer watched at least 65 videos per month. Using that same evaluation, the following companies have enormous growth potential (in total streams) by increasing the average # of videos viewed: CBS, Disney, MLB, Yahoo!, ABC, NBC Universal, AOL Media.

It would be debatable as the reason for such low avg views per person (content, discoverability, ubiquity, format, etc), but may be an easier solution than trying to capture audiences away from YouTube.

Brian Walsh — 5:44 PM on October 22, 2008 Reply
Hulu’s growth has been very impressive. Kudos to them!

To your point on monetizable video. This is an important measure for marketers. From a pure video perspective, the monetizability of YouTube videos is same as the number 2 and 3 – Yahoo! and Fox. However, monetization of YouTube via other means such as display ads, companion banner, sponsorships will garner greater revenue vs. other sites. They simply great audience reach.

Akash — 10:44 PM on October 22, 2008 Reply
you make 4% sound so small but it end up being about 214,000 videos. If you only counted videos they could monetize it would still be the 3rd largest video site.

Hulu definitely deserves to be in second behind youtube and I’ll sure it will march right up to that spot in no time.

Stefan Hayden — 10:57 AM on October 27, 2008 Reply
They suck. We’re better hulahoop and other services have Hawaii 5-0, I mean, who watches that? We have Entourage, The Hills, and everything else – you know, shows people actually watch.

http://www.cavenger.com

Cavenger — 7:52 PM on November 1, 2008 Reply

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