The latest comScore figures read well for Hulu, and online video as a whole. Hell, even the major networks which are struggling to compete with the might of Hulu can take solace in their growth for the past year.
Hulu
has gone from strength to strength since launching to many cries of derision from certain sectors of the television industry. It has built a well-known brand, a huge audience, and an army of advertisers eager to sell their wares to a switched-on Web TV-viewing public.
Hulu ended 2010 on a high, with record numbers of viewers and people signing up to its subscription-based Hulu Plus service. The latter being despite the $7.99-a-month asking price not getting rid of all the ads.
A new report from comScore shows just how much Hulu dominated proceedings in the U.S. in 2010.
Hulu Thrashes The Networks
Throughout the course of the year Hulu easily beat the viewing times of the websites of all five major television networks combined. Which isn’t too surprising but intriguing to note nonetheless.
In the fourth quarter, viewers racked up an impressive 19.4 billion minutes of video watched on Hulu. On the websites of ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, and the CW, a further 9.7 billion minutes of video was watched.
In terms of growth its the individual websites which are doing well, with 82 in Q4, while Hulu could only manage 17 percent growth. Taken together there was a 33 percent growth in the number of minutes watched on these premium websites.
Conclusions
The networks don’t seem to know what to do about Hulu. They know they need it and gain viewers and revenue from it, but they’d still rather people headed to their own individual websites so they could control everything to the nth degree.
[Via TechCrunch]
