I don't know how old Alec Baldwin really is. But my guess is that his driver's license would not reveal him to be younger than he looks.
And it seems that Hulu, the brand Baldwin so brilliantly sold during the Super Bowl (who will ever forget that TV turns your brains to mush? Well, most TV viewers will, because their brains have turned to mush), is delighting in a little more maturity than some might think.
The Wall Street Journal suggested Wednesday that when Hulu went public last March, its largest demographic was not snotty-nosed punks actively looking to mush their brains, but those whose gray matter was in a fairly ripened state of mushiness. Yes, those 55 and over.
The Journal puts this down to a rather 1.0 launch of the brand. These days, it says, Hulu's sweet viewing spot is inhabited by 25- to 34-year-olds. YouTube is still far more popular, percentage-wise, among the pimpled crowd of teenies and post-teenies.
Of course, YouTube's traffic is around 10 times that of Hulu's. But apparently 15 out of 20 searches on YouTube are for the kind of TV content for which Hulu has a license and YouTube often does not.
So who do you think will win in the end? The brand with all the videos of weird psychopathic doctors, overeaters, cuddly animals, office workers making a documentary about themselves, and stand-up comics of very varying abilities?
Or, um, YouTube?
Welcome to the Year of Fear. They say 2009 will be difficult, dangerous, maybe even disastrous. But, here at Technically Incorrect, we believe it will be the year that the seemingly impossible will be the most likely to happen.
So here are 6 things that we feel sure will occur in 2009. Notice the vital importance of advertising in each of these surefire occurrences.
1. FACEBOOK WILL BE SOLD TO A NETWORK TV STATION. Oh, guffaw away if you must. But some time this year the folks at Facebook will sit down and realize that they haven't sold much advertising. Again. They will look around, from beanbag to beanbag, at the faces in the room and realize that TV stations are still somehow selling ad space. Best bet to pick up this bottle-fed (no teat showing, as per Facebook rules) baby will be NBC. I mean, if you can sell the Olympics on the basis of NOT showing it live, then you really are the magicians of ad sales.
2. HULU WILL START ITS OWN PORN SITE. I think I read somewhere that hotels make most of their money from porn channels. You know, sad, lonely men hanging around in hotel rooms with nothing better to do than hang around. Hulu will get in on this market. Naturally, the biggest difficulty will be selling advertising around this channel. However, NBC is a major player in Hulu. See Prediction No.1 for details of the network's phenomenal advertising sales skills.
(Credit:
CC Mosieur J)
3. GOOGLE WILL BUY TWITTER. Because Google is so committed to privacy, deeply, deeply committed, it will buy Twitter. No, not so that you can merely follow someone around, very privately. No, it's so that you can very privately keep up with other people's Google searches in real time. Mark my words, this is the next growth area. People watching people searching. Very privately. And just think of the advertising opportunities. Ads beamed to you in real time reflecting your real up-to-the-minute moods and feelings. And the moods and feelings of everyone you're following. Cool, huh?
4. YOUTUBE WILL LAUNCH ITS OWN CABLE CHANNEL. You know, it's not always easy to find the videos you really want to see on YouTube. If you look at what people are watching most, it often seems to be soccer matches from Poland or Turkey. So YouTube will launch a cable channel, probably in partnership with hitherto advertising-free HBO, that will feature the finest new uploads: the plaintive Britney fans, the strange college sportscasters, the scorned theatrical wives. It will be like America's Funniest Videos but will last for 24 hours each day. Advertisers will, naturally, flock to this surefire hit.
5. ADVERTISING AGENCIES WILL LAY OFF ALL CREATIVE STAFF AND PRODUCE ADS BY ALGORITHM. You thought this had already happened? Well, almost. Mathematicians have proved that there are only so many new ideas in the world and we've pretty much seen them all. In today's difficult business environment, mathematicians are far better placed to work out precisely what will sell than the hairy, unwashed potheads who went to art school but can't paint a lick. Google has proved itself to be the world's most efficient advertising agency and its greatest problem will lie in keeping its mathematicians out of the clutches of the folks who brought you Tony the Tiger and the Five Dollar Foot Long song.
6. THE LARGE HADRON COLLIDER WILL LAUNCH ON THE SAME DAY AS WINDOWS 7. This is perhaps the surest of all our predictions. The two greatest steps forward for mankind will not only be launched on the same day, but will do it in a joint promotion. The Collider's computers will all be running Windows 7, while Windows 7 will be available with a new, free dance video from the Collider scientists. It will be the greatest success in scientific and advertising history.
This is Technically Incorrect, yes, Incorrect, thanking all those who realize that entertainment is far more important than news and wishing you an extraordinary New Year. This post was generated using the Deleterious Substances Algorithm, kindly loaned to me by a chap from Google I met in a local sushi restaurant.
It has always been in the back of many minds that having many not quite legal and not quite professional videos on your site might just affect advertising revenue.
Now Arash Amel, an analyst at Screen Digest, a company that researches digital media, is forecasting that Hulu's U.S. revenue will rival that of YouTube next year, his estimated number being $180 million. (Hulu, backed by NBC and Fox, hasn't even gotten around to launching in the rest of the world yet.)
Mr. Amal makes YouTube's earnings sound like profit of doom: "YouTube is in a very tough place right now," he told the Financial Times. "Most of that user-generated content is worthless or illegal. The next 18 months will determine whether or not it was just an expensive mistake for Google."
Some in the advertising business have always been reticent about YouTube's rather messy atmosphere, when compared to Hulu's more focused upper-middle-class professionalism.
One client once put it to me in very blunt terms: "Why should I put my ad next to a video of some idiot screaming that Britney should be left alone?"
It will surely be interesting to see whether the mere presence of many people floating through your site on a daily basis (YouTube claims 83 million unique U.S. viewers to Hulu's 6 million) will ever be enough to attract not merely the right kinds of advertisers (yes, the ones who still have money) but also a method of advertising that actually makes online hoards pay attention.
YouTube has been frantically trying to find "new" ways to encourage advertisers, yet it seems to be reverting to some very old ways indeed.
So next year could see some considerable cheer for advertisers wanting not to be entirely dependent on Momma Google.
Oh, and good morning, Facebook. How's the growth strategy working for you?
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