Hulu Archive

Last night we wrote about the new set of embeddable widgets that video streaming service Hulu has launched. It sure seems like the widgets load very slowly. While watching the widget load, I noticed that they are grabbing data and pushing it to Omniture’s tracking beacon. This is the same beacon we wrote about with regards to Adobe and their potential spyware.

There’s nothing in the Hulu privacy policy regarding the widgets and any sort of tracking. There’s also no notice of tracking on the Hulu widget page. Should there be? And more importantly, should I as the person embedding the widgets understand what it is that Hulu is tracking? Trust me, I am a tracking freak so I understand the need for Hulu to understand how and where their widgets are being used. But I’d also like to see some transparency regarding what it is that they are tracking. How can I be assured that they aren’t tracking items outside of their widget? What information isbeing passed back to Hulu from my site and more importantly, my site visitors.

I’d like to see Hulu create a checkbox that the person lifting the widget has agreed to the terms of the widget which must include what it is that Hulu is tracking.

This is a simple example of a topic which will need to be discussed as an industry at some point in the very near future. Are all widgets considered a form of advertising and ad-based rules apply? When I embed a widget on my site, what responsibilities do I and the widget source have in communicating privacy and terms with regards to the widget(s)?

NewTeeVee and Techcrunch are reporting tonight on the launch of a set of embeddable widgets from Hulu. Hulu CTO Eric Feng and Techcrunch editor Michael Arrington sat down at the Techcrunch house for an interview. During the interview, Feng discusses the launch of a set of embeddable widgets. I have enjoyed using the Hulu service since their launch – it’s also growing quite well in terms of traffic and video views.

I’ve written about widgets before, spoken on panels about widgets and believe that widgets will change the advertising landscape over the next year or so. From my perspective, the Hulu widgets provide little to no real value and I don’t see why a content publisher (blog, MySpace profile, whatever) would embed these widgets.

The "Hulu’s Show & Movie Widget" which I’ve embedded below forces a user away from the content site to Hulu to watch the video. It’s a bit odd considering they allow embedding the shows online and how Feng talks about hyper distribution as the model Hulu is striving for. I’d prefer to see the ability to view the video directly inside or that the widget expands to view the show. If Hulu could provide this type of widget, it would be a real winner for Hulu, the video viewer and the content site owner. If you take their full, non-customizable widget, it will play the video inside the widget. But anyone who will want to embed a Hulu widget into their site or blog, will want their favorite or related shows in the embed (like Michael did with the DailyShow).

On the flip side, this is a great marketing play – if they can get users to embed the widgets, the users will provide Hulu with all the free marketing they could ever want – even while providing no value to the site that embeds the widget. Feng says Hulu is open to feedback on the widgets – so there’s my feedback – make all of the widgets play inside of the widget for maximum effectiveness.

comScore is out with their May online video report. No surprise here, Google still leads the pack with 35% market share. Google’s YouTube property accounts for 98% of the Google video traffic. Fox Interactive, Yahoo, Microsoft and Viacom round out the top 5. The full list is below. Surprisingly Hulu has joined the top 10 with 88 million videos viewed.

Here are the other notes from comScore for May 2008:

• 74 percent of the total U.S. Internet audience viewed online video.
• The average online video viewer watched 228 minutes of video.
• 82.2 million viewers watched 4.1 billion videos on YouTube.com (50.4 videos per viewer).
• 54.8 million viewers watched 703 million videos on MySpace.com (12.8 videos per viewer).
• 6.8 million viewers watched 88 million videos on Hulu.com (13.0 videos per viewer).
• The duration of the average online video was 2.7 minutes.

YouTube will always come in with a higher video/user count because most of their videos are short, user-generated and are typically unplanned while sites like Hulu are longer shows and are typically planned.

Ashkan says more videos were watched than searches were performed.

This week at the NY Video 2.0 meeting, a variety of companies either demo’ed their service or provided a variety of business updates. If you are in the NYC tech or media scene, this might be the best monthly meetup to attend.

Here are the presenters:

1. Hulu – Kevin McGurn, VP National Sales (our coverage) — Michael has an article today about Hulu’s ad rates
2. Move Networks – Bob Bryson, SVP Sales & BD
3. Boxee – Avner Ronen, Co-founder & CEO
4. MediaMerx – Tejpaul Bhatia, Co-founder & CEO
5. Visible Measures – Matt Cutler, VP Marketing & Analytics (our coverage)

If you want to jump around in the video, click play, then pause and wait for the loading bar to finish, then you can jump, jump around.

This afternoon Hulu CEO Jason Kilar appeared on Fox Business to discuss the public release of the Hulu online video/TV service. I’ve captured a video from the brief discussion and it’s embedded below. Here is a transcript of the important parts (my emphasis):

"Already the business model is proving itself, which is we support the service through advertising and there’s a strong enough demand that we are actually getting higher rates than on broadcast, specifically even in primetime tv…advertising is sold on a CPM basis and we are very fortunate to be in a position that the advertising bought on Hulu is even higher than that on primetime."

"The common thread between the two is that Amazon is one of the best companies in the world at focusing on the user experience. And that’s exactly what Hulu is, in obsessed as well. That’s what gets us out of bed in the morning, why we show up to work and often times stay until 3 AM in the morning."

Perhaps Kilar has been reading the also LA-based Calacanis Employee Manual.

Online television video provider Hulu has announced the opening of their beta program today. They are now allowing each current beta participant to invite 10 more people. If you’d like an invite, leave your info in the comments – email goes in the email field only!

Hulu is capitalizing on the SuperBowl by not only displaying all of the commercials from the game, but also selling a sponsorship against them! This might be the first time that a commercial sponsors a commercial.

Here is the currently highest rated SuperBowl ad – it’s with Justin Timberlake for Pepsi.

I’ve enjoyed using Hulu for several weeks now. The quality is good, the technology works well and so far no errors. The success of Hulu is dependent on their partner Web sites. For example, I could see my mom using AOL Video to watch reruns of Murder She Wrote, but getting her to go to hulu.com might be more difficult.

AOL and MSN were the first partner Web sites to feature hulu content. Today I noticed for the first time that AOL is pushing hulu to its software customers — those who use the full AOL application (and yes, I do use the AOL application). The link appears within the mail function and normally the link (in purple) is for an ad partner.

When you click on the graphic, it takes you to AOL Video and directly into the Hulu section. It’s a smart move by AOL to start to move its base of customers into hulu through AOL Video where they can monetize the videos beyond the in-video ads provided by hulu. The only suggestion I have for AOL is to remove the hulu name and just promote the shows and clips as AOL Video content. It’s not the same as noting "CBS" on a panel of content.