Hulu beating out YouTube in the video monetization?
I never expected Hulu to work out, but according to ReadWriteWeb's review of a recent report from LiveRail, it may actually be doing better than YouTube in terms of online video monetization.
Why? Because Hulu is apparently able to sell ads against 100 percent of its video inventory, while YouTube is struggling to hit 3 percent. User-generated video content, it would appear, is not nearly as lucrative as selling advertising against professionally-generated video content....
Hulu has better content, and higher quality of video, even though it has far less overall content. According to LiveRail, Hulu hosts 88 million videos, compared to YouTube's 4.2 billion. When I want a Saturday Night Live sketch, however, I find it on Hulu, not YouTube (at least, not for long on YouTube).
Less content, but better, seems to pay, at least in the video world.
Even so, is it just a matter of time until higher bandwidth commoditizes video, as well, to the point that it will be as "worthless" as text? Maybe. At that point, it would make a lot of sense to bundle in pricing for video with my monthly ISP subscription. I'm happy to pay. I just don't want to have to think about it. Make online video payment as easy as paying my cable subscription.
Matt Asay brings a decade of in-the-trenches open-source business and legal experience to The Open Road, with an emphasis on emerging open-source business strategies and opportunities. Matt is vice president of business development at Alfresco, a company that develops open-source software for content management. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure. You can follow Matt on Twitter @mjasay. 
It is interesting to see hulu managing to monetize better than youtube, I think further what is interesting is seeing that although right now the market for advertising is still small in video web advertising, showing over 50% growth next year alone.
For more insights please check our recently released State of The Industry Report: http://www.liverail.com/liverail_q3_report.pdf
Is this coming from the guy that actively blocks banner ads? tsk tsk. ;-)
- by The_Decider September 5, 2008 8:55 AM PDT
- I don't know how surprising it is. How many advertisers want their BS next to some teen dancing in her underwear, an idiot rapping his order in driver through, or some crude animation?
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