Written by Liz Gannes
Posted Wednesday, October 29, 2008 at 10:31 AM PT

 

Hulu Doing Great, But Why So Shy about Numbers?

Hulu is doing a big PR push today around the birthday of its beta, with profiles in the New York Times and USA Today. The company shared some nice stats, like its impressive Nielsen numbers (our story) and its viewers’ receptiveness to ads. For instance, a study of four brands showed Hulu increased purchase intent by 28 percent and message association by 22 percent. Meanwhile, 93 percent of Hulu users surveyed say Hulu has the right amount of ads.

Hulu also found that 38 percent of respondents watched shows they’d never seen before that currently air on TV, 20 percent watched episodes or clips of a series they normally watch on TV but had missed, and 19 percent watched a show that’s no longer on TV. So Hulu can say that the site is additive, rather than stealing watchers from its TV network parents and partners.

But even though Hulu will tell us its users have written more than 72,000 reviews on its site, and Twitter users have “tweeted” about Hulu more than 40,000 times since April, it’s still leaving out the big stats. You know, the ones that would prove that this whole online video business is actually a business. That the site is a viable medium for consuming content. What would we like to know? Here’s three basic figures that would go a long way:

  • Actual numbers of views per episode of each show
  • Total number of registered users on the site
  • Any details at all about ad dollars, CPMs, overall revenue

Here’s hoping Jason Kilar will cough some of this up next month when he keynotes our NewTeeVee Live conference!

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Topic: Startups

Comments (4)

  • Liz -

    I don’t disagree with any point you make here, but must ask the question: Why do you seem surprised they don’t publish the numbers?

    They don’t even publish accurate DVD sales reports and that media has been around for over a decade.

    Bill Cunningham — 11:50 AM on October 29, 2008 Reply

  • Liz, one thing I’d love to find out is whether CPM buys for ads in Hulu are in some shape or form tied to the media buys on TV. i.e. I’ve heard of numbers as high as $70 CPM on Hulu. Is that number a combined buy with TV ads or separate?
    Also, are the ad buys done separately for in-stream ads vs. overlays. And if they have a sponsored page revenue model ?
    It may be too much info to extract from them, but hey, we can try …

    Akash — 1:26 PM on October 29, 2008 Reply

  • They’ve devised a mechanism to bring region coding to the internet. They place a geo-blocking firewall in front of their content. No one outside of the US can see their content.

    Of course they’re going to be cagey about their viewership.

    Rick Harris — 6:29 AM on October 30, 2008 Reply

  • This is because they loose money on each viewer hour (look at CPM vs. license costs per view). You can’t make that up in volume.

    Dan — 10:29 AM on October 30, 2008 Reply

Linkbacks (2)

  • [...] And yet, Hulu arrived and it didn’t suck. It has a nice interface, it shows pretty good quality video in a nice wide player, and it lets you pause and even embed video. It’s not available outside the United States, of course, but there are ways of getting around those restrictions if you really want to. There’s lots of great content on Hulu too, including some of my favourite old TV shows like Time Tunnel and I Dream of Jeannie and whatnot. So all in all, it’s done pretty well for itself — and it has the numbers to prove it (although not enough for Liz Gannes at NewTeeVee). [...]

    Hulu doesn’t suck: Is that success… — 2:47 PM on October 29, 2008

  • [...] isn’t shy about touting its ad effectiveness. Last year, the company released stats saying that Hulu increased purchase intent by 28 percent and message association by 22 percent. [...]

    D’oh! Simpsons Worth More on Hulu Than… — 5:36 PM on June 25, 2009

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