According to comScore’s Video Metrix Report for April, Hulu grew the number of streams it served in April relative to March slightly (from ~380M to 397M) but the unique viewers dropped from 41.56M to 40.11M.
According to Jason Kincaid at TechCrunch:
Much of the site’s growth between January and February can probably be attributed to its prime time Super Bowl commercial, which introduced the site for the first time to millions of viewers. Since then the site has kept up a star-studded marketing campaign to keep awareness up. I suspect that most of the site’s new users earlier this year were the low hanging fruit — people who would love to watch their TV and movie content on their computer screen, but didn’t know that Hulu even existed. Now the site is going to have to convince the die-hard TV fans to switch up their viewing habits if it wants to keep the same momentum going. Hulu Desktop, one of the first products to come out of Hulu labs, may help with this. But it’s going to be hard to break people out of old habits.
I mostly agree with Jason’s assessment. Hulu grew rapidly from September to March, taking streams from ~146 million in September to the ~397 milion in April, while growing unique users from 12.5 million to 40.1 million in that period (with a peak of 41.56 million in March). It’s hard to sustain that sort of growth and the audience of people. The good news is that overwhelmingly, most people (name the demographic, and it’s probably still true) aren’t checking out Hulu even once a month, not even for a clip, so there’s a LOT of room for growth. The bad news is that overwhelmingly, most people aren’t checking out Hulu, even once a month.
Lots more, including data tables on TechCrunch
B/C when watching the shows – they keep pausing and downloading 15 minutes into whatever your watching -it’s annoying….
i agree
also they are constantly changing content
something you were getting into and watching today might not be there tomorrow
also some things they dont havethe entire thing
ill cite babylon 5
I have a question for someone who regularly use HULU . Is the quality of streaming always fluid ?
) which most probably reduced my bandwidth …so is it good enough ?
I used a couple of time HULU but since I’m outside US I had to use a “trick” (
UH, I usually like to pause it and let the buffer get to 100% (usually takes about 15 seconds or so), and it’s fine after that. Certainly more so than the ABC Player. For some reason, without fail, the video gets choppy after the first break.
Interesting …Julia , i tried to do in this way but I have understood that for “legal” reason you can buffer small portion of the streaming so after you are forced to pause again ….and this is a little bit annoying …but again , I could be due to reduced bandwidth in my case
I use Hulu probably once or twice a week and the quality is always quite good. I watch the lower 360p versions rather than the better quality 480p and even with older shows the video is relatively crisp and clear and I rarely have to stop to let the buffer build up. I watched the most recent season of 24 on Hulu rather than FOX’s website and it looked great.
I don’t mind the commercials, to be honest, unless they aren’t lined up with the actual breaks in the episodes. I’ve watched episodes of The A-Team, Stargate: SG-1, The Dick Van Dyke Show and Welcome Back, Kotter. True, it is frustrating when certain episodes are not available (for example, there are perhaps a dozen episodes from each season of Welcome Back, Kotter but they aren’t in any order).
Hulu is free and I enjoy it.
UH, the problem is in the trick
HULU is an EXCELLENT idea ( I would love to have in Italy ) I’m just curious to know if the opportunity to have the freedom to watch you own tv on internet force to have a compromise in the quality of viewing …if this is the case I do not believe HULU will be able to change the habits of “regular tv viewer “
Eh… this was my guess AD
I think they’ll start growing again once ABC joins up…when is that happening again?
That’s funny. Those disgusting commercials were actually the reason I stopped going there. It’s almost like they were designed by the same agency that does the Quiznos ads — except I think even the Quiznos ads are more appealing.
Note to ad agencies: I do not want to see Seth MacFarlane’s belly or Alec Baldwin sticking his tongue in another guy’s ear. Thank you very much.
Amen, Riff.
Nothing was freakier than the Feed the Pig commercials they played during many of the shows.
I still believe the biggest problem is that they’re behind the “illegal” downloads. A new show airs the next day on Hulu, where the torrent is out in 30 min to an hour, faster for those on newsgroups. So I hear…
Sorry Chad , but …. what’s the reason to download a show 30 minutes after it was aired ?
Are you a P2P user ?
UH, “because we can” and impatience are the most likely reasons. If the show isn’t locally broadcast where you are, and you’re in a hurry to see it, P2P makes sense. But for the masses, streaming sites like Hulu have a much lower barrier to downloading via P2P.
One thing Comscore apparently doesn’t track (or wasn’t included in the info I saw) is the number of uniques who download via P2P per month. At least in the US, my guess is its not by a long shot anywhere near as many people who visited Hulu at least once a month.
I’m the opposite, Julia. ABC works fine for me, and the video quality is superb. Hulu works well, but the quality is just average.
That’s was my point on Chad comment , Robert . For a US citizen make no sense to be faster then light if not to say “yes we can ”
Different story is for European citizens ( much different ) but also in this case a European Hulu would be more then enough ( again with a good streaming quality and enough choices )
It does not surprise me that there is a lull right now because the main tv season has ended. And there is not much a quality movie selection.
I absolutely love Hulu and am an avid user (1 to 2 hours a day). It is by far the best quality compared to anything available, including all the studios direct sites and rival Fancast. My biggest problem is with all sites that many of the programs are only available for six weeks.
I have used it on multiple work and home computers. The biggest difference I have noticed in viewing depends on things in the viewers control.
Is all the software and hardware on your computer up-to-date?
Not five years old. While everyday use of word processing and internet reading may be fine. Video streaming requires the latest and fastest technology. I recently had to get a new OS for my Mac because it couldn’t update the flash player (as well as other programs) to view online media.
Do you have the fastest internet connection?
If your company is promising you a certain amount of bandwidth make sure they are giving it too you.
Are there multiple users on your network?
This is especially important at home. Oftentimes there is not enough bandwidth to stream, if other family members or roommates are surfing the web.
Doug, the quality of the actual video on ABC is fine (though I see no difference between it and Hulu, but I never choose HD), it’s the playback/streaming that’s the problem.
Maybe they can gain more growth if they bring it over to Canada already.
Hudson, if the Canadian networks who paid to license the rights to content wanted to make that content available via Hulu to Canadians, I’m sure Hulu would be happy to do it. It seems that most of the networks outside of the US (not just Canada) that have licensed the rights to US content for their local geographies don’t actually WANT to make the content available online.
You should try the HD sometime, Julia. It’s amazing.
Yes Robert this is basically the problem with non US networks . I know that HULU is in contact with Endemol to have license for US about some contents from Endemol ( jeeeez I hope not only reality rubbish ) , even if UK based , Endemol is 49% owned form MEdiaset ( the Italian private network ) , for a lot of people this sound like an opportunity for HULU to arrive in Europe ( at least UK and Italy ) .
Since I know the very very “old” approach of Mediaset to Internet I fear we will have a Shitty HULU in Europe and this is a pity because they still do not understand that this approach will have as only result to make the P2P much stronger …
The problem is flow, Hulu disrupts it with click to continue ads. The performances of television viewership are not served well by the current interface design of Hulu. People who use a popcorn hour or whatever technology you like are already alright with decreased flow – flow is key to ubiquity, ubiquity is key to transform the behaviors of the public.
Dan – not sure I understand you: What do you mean “click to continue ads”? Once I start a Hulu.com stream, I don’t need to click anything, it’s almost like watching TV except you can pause and move the cursor if you want to.
Hulu is considerably less disruptive than TV in practice as the ads are relatively infrequent and they’re usually less than 30 seconds long.
My hulu requires me to click to continue when I watch programming, it stops and waits for input, which is why I don’t use it regularly anymore.
The argument I am starting to make is that TV watching practices are different than Hulu watching practices and that if Hulu could simulate the flow of TV channels by predicting viewer preferences. (my hulu doesn’t do this, but that doesn’t mean other folks doesn’t) At that point, one could turn on the Hulu just like they turn on the TV. (a lot of this has been in other comments, so I may not have been as descriptive as I should have been originally).
Is anyone else experiencing what Dan’s experiencing?
I just plodded through fourteen episodes of Firefly, and didn’t experience any occasions in which I had to click anything (except, obviously, when I intentionally paused the video.) Even when Hulu came up with a “We can’t load this ad, disable your ad-blocker you leeching bar-steward” message (what’s the deal with that anyway? I didn’t have anything that would block their ads) Hulu would just sit there for thirty seconds and then continue, unprompted.
Either I got lucky, or Dan’s having a technical issue and it’d be interesting to see what’s causing it.
might become pay soon
http://gizmodo.com/5278469/will-hulu-become-a-pay-service
I think the slew of article’s about Miller’s comments are more than a bit misleading. You won’t see Hulu charge soon. But for good reasons I believe what will ultimately happen (though I think it will take more than a year probably) is that Hulu and online sites will have to figure out whether you pay for cable or not and if you’re a cable subscriber receiving, for example USA Network and SciFi, you will continue to receive those shows on Hulu for FREE. But if you’re NOT a cable subscriber already receiving those shows, they will charge you for them.
Hulu saw the drop because most shows for the season have ended. I assume most people went there to see shows they missed, like I do. With no new content there is no reason to show up.
And Robert S. How would hulu be able to identify if you are a cable TV subscriber. personally I thought the cable networks like USA and SciFi are already using ad revenue to produce their shows with Cable TV acting as a delivery tool. I would understand if Hulu started offering HBO or Showtime or On Demand that a fee would need to be picked up because these channels dont use commercials. Actually that might be great idea for Hulu, get HBO/Showtime/Stars/ETC. to have a pay deliver system. Great for poeple who dont want cable TV but might have broadband internet and want premium internet delivery..
my understanding is there is alot of back fighting amonst the “partners”
so i think this will kill them as they will prob go their seperate ways
they have no money making mode4l that they can all agree on
oh well when its gone back to torrent…
too bad i like hulu
need to fix a few things
streaming isnt always solid- and content changes often
which whats the deal with that?
or they dont have some missing episodes or even missing whole seasons of some shows
again whats the deal with that too..
annoying seeing the same commercial 4 times in a row anyway…
As NBC gives up 5 hours a week of prime time to Leno you can count on that impacting Hulu. 5 dramas or other scripted shows in that timeslot would get more people to watch. But a variety show? Even if it’s good, it’s not something most people feel the need to catch up on if they missed it.
Some Guy named John: the drop in unique visitors occurred from March to April, so I don’t think it had anything to do with season being over. We have not seen numbers for May or June yet, which may well show bigger drops.