Difference between revisions of "Hulu"

Revision as of 00:17, 27 April 2016

Hulu

Hulu's logo [url ] Type Joint Venture Launch Date March 2007 Status Active Product Line On Demand Video Streaming Platform Google Chrome Mozilla Firefox Safari Internet Explorer Microsoft Windows Mac OS X Linux Website www.hulu.com

Hulu is an ad-supported online video service that offers on-demand streaming content including popular TV shows, movies, and other clips from many networks including FOX, ABC, and NBC. The Hulu team shares the company with The Walt Disney Company, NBCUniversal, News Corporation, and Providence Equity Partners.^[1] Starting as a subscription-based service, Hulu is now free for all users, but also provides a premium service called Hulu Plus, which provides more content on additional devices for $7.99 a month.^[2] Hulu Plus presents ethical concerns in that many users piggyback off of a friend's account information, and they are able to take advantage of the Hulu Plus services without actually paying for them. Hulu's headquarters are located in Los Angeles, California.

History

Hulu, literally meaning "gourd" or "interactive recording" in Mandarin, was founded in March of 2007 in partnership with AOL, Comcast, MSN, MySpace, and Yahoo. It started with an invitation-based beta testing only available in the U.S. Jason Hilar was appointed CEO in 2007. Additionally, in 2007 Hulu won "Best Video Startup" at the 2007 Crunchies, an event sponsored by TechCrunch, GigaOm, and VentureBeat^[3].

On March 12th, 2008, Hulu opened its services to the U.S. public, starting with over 250 T.V. shows and 100 movies from FOX, NBC, and their affiliated channels^[4]. In 2008, The Walt Disney Company became an equity owner of Hulu, adding many of Disney's most popular shows including shows like Lost, Grey's Anatomy, and Desperate Housewives.^[5] In late 2008, a "Discussions" tab was also added underneath the video player that allowed users to engage in discussion.

Hulu's revenue form 2008-2011

In 2011, the Hulu Plus app was created for Android smart phones. The app was originally designed for the Nexus One, Nexus S, HTC Inspire 4G, Motorola Droid II, Motorola Droid X, and the Motorola Atrix, but by the end of the year, was available on over 200 million devices including Microsoft's Xbox 360, other types of smart phones, and tablets such as the Barnes and Noble's NOOK tablet and Amazon's Kindle Fire. Hulu also launched in Japan in late 2011, they year when they began allowing users to have access to show programs limited to four devices for one monthly price.

Hulu launched Hulu AdZone, presented by Toyota, which offered all of the Super Bowl ads going back as far as 1973^[6]

On April 17th, 2012, Hulu announced a "100% Completion Rate" deal with advertisers using their services - if advertisements were not streamed until they were finished, advertisers were not charged.^[7]. Previously available for Microsoft's Xbox 360 and the Nintendo Wii, on September 10th, 2012, Hulu Plus became available on the third major gaming platform: Sony's Playstation 3.

As of 2011, Hulu Plus has 1.5 million subscribers, making it the fastest video subscription service to reach that number in U.S. history. In 2012, Hulu added its own original programming, including the Hulu original sitcom, "Battlefield," which premiered in February.^[8]

Advertising

Hulu's Adswap allows users to pick the commercial they want to watch

In 2010, Hulu reported that it averaged $0.143 in revenue from ads per episode watched,^[9] and in 2011, Hulu generated the highest number of video ads in the U.S. at 963 million ads viewed^[10]. Hulu also began asking users to rate whether or not ads were relevant to them - ads deemed irrelevant would be replaced with different ones.^[11] Hulu offers a multitude of deals for advertisers to choose from. There are many layouts of different advertisements, as well as different skins that they can choose from for users to view.

With Hulu advertising, companies can target specific demographics. Hulu offers its viewers choice-based advertisements. This means that users can select which type of advertisement they want to view. For companies that use the choice-based advertisement option, their advertisement may not have as big of a reach but they can be more sure that the people that are seeing their advertisement will have more interest in the product. Hulu also takes pride in their “proprietary ad serving technology.” For viewers, this mean that the advertisements that they will be seeing will be “more relevant, more engaging, and ultimately more effective.” Hulu has shown data that reports that advertising on Hulu is more successful and effective than traditional TV advertising. These are the various ad formats that advertisers can utilize:

• 7-Second Commercial
  • This is a quick way to build your brand name and increase awareness of the company.
• 15- Or 30-Second Commercial
  • Custom Video
• Ad Selector
  • Your advertisement would compete with other ads. It will be presented to the user with two or three other options and the user will choose which ad they would like to view. Users will be able to pick which ad to watch based on a thumbnail from the commercial.
• Branded Entertainment Selector (BES)
  • Users will watch one long advertisement at the beginning of the shows instead of the regular variety of short ads throughout the show.
• Slate
  • A standard logo splash that will be shown to the user before the show begins.
• Premium Slate
  • Instead of just a static logo image before the show, it will be a seven-second advertisement that appears before the show starts.
• Action Bar
  • This is a standard banner-like advertisement. The user can click on the banner and open up the full advertisement. From there, there might be more clickable options.

^[12]

Hulu Plus

Hulu Plus on the iPad

Hulu plus is a monthly subscription service that now has over 2 million customers. It launched its beta on June 29th, 2010 and officially launched to the public on November 17, 2010. Contrary to popular belief, Hulu plus still has the same commercials as Hulu, but has a wider library of content for users to view. It has full seasons and more episodes of shows that Hulu does not provide. Hulu Plus also unlocks the Hulu app for iOS and Android smart phones and tablets.

Hulu Desktop

Hulu recently introduced a beta version of Hulu Desktop, a free application that provides Hulu content using a PC or Mac remote and does not require the use of a web browser. No account is needed to use Hulu Desktop; it will be equipped with all of the same content from online sources. It is available on Windows, Mac, and Linux PCs. These videos can be viewed in all definitons, up to 1080p. ^[13]

Hulu Publisher Tools

Hulu Publisher Tools, designed for bloggers and webmasters, makes it easy to embed Hulu content into articles and blog posts. It also serves as a directory of the most relevant and popular videos on Hulu accessible at any time.^[14]

Availability

Currently, Hulu is only available in the United States and Japan. However, there are many users who get around this limitation by using proxy servers. ^[15] Exclusive deals for the digital rights of many U.S. shows would make it difficult for Hulu to go global. However, Kilar has said "We Won't be satisfied until this is a global service". ^[16] Hulu's latest step in achieving this goal was making a deal with FremantleMedia Enterprises to distribute its original shows outside the U.S. ^[17]

Devices

The free version of Hulu is only available on a computer or laptop; however, Hulu Plus is supported and available on a multitude of devices. The list includes the Apple iPad, iPhone, Roku, Samsunk TVs and Blu-ray Disc Players, Sony BRAVIA Internet-Enabled Devices, Sony PlayStation 3, VIZIO, Nintendo Wii and Xbox 360. Paying for Hulu Plus allows subscribers to access everything Hulu has to offer on their TV via a home entertainment device or on their mobile devices.^[18] However, people without Hulu Plus who wish to watch shows via the free version of Hulu on their TV can also do so by connecting their computers to their TVs with an HDMI cable or other connector.

Content

Hulu's original series, Battleground, starring Jay Hayden, Terri Reeves, and Jack DeSana

Original content has made a major push within video streaming services, such as Hulu and Netflix. Some of the Hulu original series include:

• The Morning After
• A Day in the Life
• Battleground
• The Path
• Quick Draw
• Mother Up!

Ethical Implications

Hulu Plus

Many people have access to Hulu Plus without paying for its services. Users are using accounts of family members, within a household, or among a group of friends who subscribe to the service. With a simple login of an email address and password, Hulu Plus is easily shared beyond the account user. The attempt to address this ethical issue is the service's stated license agreement that say that users can only stream to one device at a time, further emphasizing that the service allows for only one stream per account.^[18] This restricts multiple users from streaming at the same time. As of now, there is no way to restrict the sharing of streaming content within the current business model. Multiple users using the same account takes advantage of the Hulu company, because Hulu is paying for double or triple the amount of advertisements that they should be spending. The benefits of Hulu plus includes higher quality in video, and less advertisements. Advertisements would be losing their opportunity to market their products because of the multiplicity of users sharing the same account. Because this is a difficult activity to track, there are no real restrictions that could be placed other than restricting video streaming from two devices at the same time. iTunes has a policy where you are only able to log into five different computers, and although this seems like a similar strategy that could be applied to Hulu, users are much more likely to watch videos from different computers than they would be to purchase songs or apps. This is a similar problem that Netflix has to deal with. Whatever method they choose to solve this problem with, it seems that many users are on Hulu because of the ability to view it on multiple streams easily.

In addition, Hulu Plus continues to broadcast advertisements in between show content, even though it is a premium paid service. This has caused a lot of customers to be upset about paying for advertisements. Hulu has even fought against ad-blocking software by creating a blank screen during the commercial breaks that lasts for minutes instead of 30 seconds, telling users to disable the software. ^[19] It begs the question whether or not paying customers should have to sit through these commercials.

Hulu Sued Over New Tracking Technology

Hulu, suspended use of KISSmetrics' analytics service after it emerged late last week that the company was using "ETag" technology to track users even when they delete their cookies. ^[20] After this incident was reported, two consumers filed lawsuits against Hulu, Joseph Garvey and Stacey Tsan, who argue that the companies' tracking methods violate the federal Video Privacy Protection Act as well as California state laws. It was also seen that Hulu was sharing its users' information with the popular social media music platform, Spotify. Hulu was reported to have created numerous, alternative, 'shadow' mechanisms for tracking as well.

Free 30-Day Trial

Many users do no like paying for Hulu Plus, but enjoy what it affords. Some users online create a new 30-day trial account when there is something new on Hulu Plus that they want to watch. There are not many blocks that prevent the user from doing this. As long as the user provides a different email each time, they are able to create a new free trial account.

However, many people accuse these free trials of being a credit card trap. To begin the free trial, users have to supply their credit card information. Unfortunately, many forget to cancel the service after the free trial and are charged for additional months.

Hulu Competitors

The following is a list of video streaming services that can be considered competitors of Hulu. Even though these companies all go about funding their services to the public in different ways they still provide similar services and can be deemed Hulu's competition for customers.

• YouTube
• Netflix
• Joost
• Desksite
• Tidal TV
• Mordern Feed
• EPIX
• FreeTube Online TV
• OVGuide
• blinkx
• TVGeroge
• Revision3
• Veoh

^[21]

See Also

References

External Links

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