Hulu Now Hawking Amazon VOD

After hearing all the buzz about this new Glee series, I tuned into Hulu last night to check it out. While enjoying a preview of the show’s fine singing and terrible acting, I noticed that Hulu offered me a link to “Buy this season today” just below its video player. The link leads over to Amazon Video on Demand.

I clicked around and it seems like Hulu is posting Amazon affiliate links on an assortment of programs, both current and old, from networks including Fox and USA, for individual episodes as well as full seasons. Many Hulu videos don’t have the Amazon links; it could be that it’s only for select programs where Amazon and Hulu’s windows happen to overlap. I didn’t see any reports or official comments on the relationship, though there’s a Tweet dating back to April from a watcher who noticed the same thing.

While Hulu has had a long-standing policy of linking outward to content that it doesn’t host, it’s telling to see the site linking to an alternative format of content it already has. It does seem indicative that Hulu is not pushing its own paid initiatives in the near term, something CEO Jason Kilar has said to be the case, though the higher-ups at Hulu parents NBC, News Corp, and Disney have indicated a subscription version of Hulu is something they’d like to see.

Kilar had said at our NewTeeVee Live conference last year he thought the $80 billion TV advertising business would be plenty for Hulu to take a bite out of, though recent reports have indicated that Hulu’s CPMs are becoming unsustainable as more premium content comes into the market. But if Hulu is linking out to Amazon for VOD, it’s probably a sure bet the the company isn’t prepping the same service on its own.