Hulu (hulu.com) is a joint venture of Fox, ABC and NBC, initially devised as an alternative to piracy. It offers free streaming video of TV content from the 3 broadcasters, and other studios. The revenue model is supported by advertisements, usually short and few (with a sleek countdown clock, which makes the experience less annoying) Not surprisingly, viewers recall the ads they see on Hulu much better than they remember TV ones.
This week Hulu’s blog (http://blog.hulu.com/2010/05/13/pardon-our-dust/) unveiled the new player improvements, consisting of a number of technical features (such as adaptive bitrate streaming or volume normalization), a slight restyling (mainly consisting on a larger screen) and “ad tailor”, a new system for better targeted advertisement. As discussed in class, this is the ultimate objective of any online advertiser.
Hulu refers to this phenomenon in terms of relevance: every time we watch an ad we’ll be asked “was this ad relevant to you? Answer yes or no with one click, and we'll use the data to try to serve your ads about the products and services most relevant to you.” Occasionally, people will be able to choose which ad to watch, so it will be even more likely to be relevant to their interests.
Hulu represents both a success and a threat for its parent companies: audience has been drawn from both illegal P2P sites, but from broadcast TV as well. In my view, Hulu will charge for premium content in a near future. As an illustrative example, RTL (a German broadcaster), allows viewers to catch up free for recent shows but charges them for older episodes, as well as to view the latest one a couple of days before it’s aired on TV.
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