Hulu sells out ad inventory, more on the way
The good news for Hulu, the video portal jointly created by NBC Universal and News Corp., is that it sold out of advertising inventory.
The bad news for Hulu viewers is that more ads are on the way.
Jeff Zucker, president of NBC Universal, made the statements during a gathering of the International Advertising Association on Monday, according to Adage.com, the Web site of magazine Advertising Age.
Over at Silicon Alley Insider, Michael Learmonth points out that Hulu, the site that has received favorable reviews for offering users the ability to watch full-length TV shows, didn't have that much inventory to sell.
Managers wanted to limit advertising so as not to turn off visitors while the month-old site was still in its infancy. In another example of how Hulu tiptoed around advertising, the site even offered users a choice of how they watched ads.
It's obvious that Zucker and Hulu execs are confident enough in the site's traffic to boost the number of ads. And as Zucker boasted about Hulu, he couldn't resist taking a poke at YouTube.
"Advertisers want to be on something where you know what you get and not on something where you could be advertising (next to a video of) a cat on a skateboard," Zucker said, according to Adage.com.
The Web site also reported that Zucker said efforts continue to try to convince Disney, Viacom, and CBS to join Hulu.
Greg Sandoval covers media and digital entertainment for CNET News. He is a former reporter for The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times. E-mail Greg, or follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/sandoCNET. 
with relatively benign advertising attached, seemed attractive at
first it still has a, IMO, fatal flaw.
I don't like watching TV shows on my computer.
If it is a choice between watching shows I've missed for free on
Hulu or paying $1.99 to download them from iTunes so I can
watch them in my living room, I prefer to pay.
I HOPE THEY PUKE.
You still get the notice at the beginning that the show's brought to you by somebody, but that's it and that's all.
- More content, please
- by devbost April 9, 2008 7:39 AM PDT
- Hulu's big problem at this point is that they simply need more content. Sure you can watch Family Guy - but only the three episodes that are available right now. And if you wait too long, they'll "expire" those episodes so you can no longer watch them.
- Reply to this comment
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(4 Comments)I don't mind the ads, as long as I can get the content. But the number of offerings are still a little thin. I ditched my Comcast DVR because I didn't want to pay $12.95 per month when on-demand content from Netflix and sites like Hulu is becoming more and more available.
I don't think having to watch ads in order to get TV shows on-demand is an unfair trade-off. But if you want my clicks and my eyeball time, you need to give me the content, and you need to do it without any silly restrictions like availability windows or expiring content. The people running sites like Hulu need to realize that there is little difference between their product and someone's DVR, and model their business practices accordingly.