Last week Hulu scored a big win when The Walt Disney Company announced its plan to claim a 30 percent stake in the successful online video destination.
Hulu and its viewers will benefit from the addition of popular ABC content including “Lost,” “Grey’s Anatomy,” “Desperate Housewives,” “Ugly Betty,” “Scrubs” and “Private Practice.” Full episodes of these shows and others will stream on Hulu and will be supported by advertisements.
With the addition of these popular shows, “we continue to aspire to deliver a service that users, advertisers and content owners unabashedly love,” said Jason Kilar, CEO of Hulu.
Since the site’s start in March 2007, Hulu has risen to heights of popularity that has made YouTube look a bit sheepish. Its offering of high-quality content has made it popular with both viewers and advertisers.
“Hulu has shown that if you make quality content available on the Web and combine it with an unbeatable user experience, viewers will come, and so will advertisers,” said Jeff Zucker, CEO and president of NBC Universal, which also has a stake in Hulu. “The addition of some of the best content Disney/ABC has to offer will only enhance Hulu's standing as a top site for high-quality video entertainment.”
Though Google’s YouTube still dominates the online video market in terms of market share, the online video giant has been bleeding cash, losing $271 million in 2005, and $276 million in 2006.
Google Sites held a 40.9 percent market share of all videos viewed in March, or 5.9 billion videos viewed, according to comScore. YouTube accounted for more than 99 percent of those videos viewed on Google’s online properties.
Fox Interactive Media was second with 437 million videos viewed in March, giving it a 3.0 percent market share.
Hulu was third with 380 million videos viewed, giving it a 2.6 percent market share in March. This marked the first time Hulu had made it into the top three online video properties in terms of videos viewed.
Google Sites also led the way in terms of unique viewers, boasting 100.4 million of them in March.
Fox Interactive Media was second with 55.2 million viewers, followed by Yahoo! Sites with 42.5 million and Hulu with 41.6 million.
A recent report released by MAGNA Global expects online video advertising revenues in the U.S. to be $699 million in 2009, up 31.9 percent from $530 million in 2008.
The report notes that online video ad revenues will be $864 million in 2010, and $1.0 billion in 2011.
YouTube may have the eyes and the clicks, but Hulu seems the likely winner of the ballooning amounts of dollars available in the online video game.
Sources:
http://www.newsfactor.com/news/YouTube-Loses-as-Disney-Joins-Hulu/story.xhtml?story_id=0100001047W6
http://www.comscore.com/press/release.asp?press=2794
http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1007070
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