Hulu Plus Passes 5M Subscribers, $1B Revenue

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Hulu will reach $1 billion in revenue in 2013. That’s up from $695 million in 2012. When you think about the fact that Hulu first launched out of beta in 2008, it’s quite an impressive feat to scale the business from zero to $1 billion over the course of just six years.

Earlier this year, we reached 5 million subscribers. Roughly 50% of those subscribers are now streaming exclusively on devices, with living room viewing accounting for over half of all content consumption on the service. Hulu Plus is now accessible on more than 400 million Internet connected devices in the U.S., including the all-new Xbox One, PlayStation®4, Chromecast, Nintendo 3DS and Windows Phone 8.* We also provided a refreshed and redesigned Hulu Plus experience on Apple TV, iPad, and millions of Samsung, Roku, and Wii devices. It is our goal to provide the best user experience possible on every device, so consumers can take their favorite TV shows with them on-the-go.
 
If they got rid of the commercials in premium account videos they'd likely grow even faster.
 
Can someone tell me why anyone would pay for a service that still forces you to watch ads?
 
Me either. When I first cut the cord I got Netflix and Hulu but after about an hour, I canceled Hulu. They have less stuff than Netflix plus had commercials. No thanks.

I actually sprung for Amazon Prime. They have more TV shows than Netflix. I'll go ahead and keep both because it's still a whole lot cheaper than cable and the free shipping ain't shabby either.
 
Yeah, I love Hulu+. Being able to pay a monthy fee to get commericals in my steams... it's amazing!

Oh, alright. I'm lying. I don't use Hulu at all because of that crap.
 
I have it, it is just cheap enough to keep, and shows I cant find on Netflix or Amazon usually end up on Hulu
 
sonsonate said:
I really don't get that at all.
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You pay for cable? You pay to watch commercials on cable channels. To not watch commercials you pay for cable plus a premium channel that doesn't use commercials really like hbo. The payment is for access of more content and features to say watch it on your tv etc.
 
Semantics said:
You pay for cable? You pay to watch commercials on cable channels. To not watch commercials you pay for cable plus a premium channel that doesn't use commercials really like hbo. The payment is for access of more content and features to say watch it on your tv etc.
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Nah, I don't pay for cable, but I do use OTA and I record and skip all that. I thought the point of online streaming was to avoid the commercials -- especially if you're paying for it, lol. When I first got Hulu, I said to myself, "Oh hmm, I'll pay and not have to watch any commercials." I had no clue that that wasn't the case. I really thought it was like Netflix. I get that they need to pay the bills, but the ads don't even begin to appeal to me (funny enough using OTA, I do sometimes just sit there and watch all the commercials) and there isn't, or doesn't seem to be, any way to view all the commercials at once like before.
 
Hulu what? Never heard of it. Sounds stupid though. I got rid of cable to get rid of ads.
 
madmat said:
If they got rid of the commercials in premium account videos they'd likely grow even faster.
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I used a trial once in hopes that it'd get rid of long ass commercials. It barely cut any time off said long ass fucking commercials.

Fuck that shit, guaranteed that I wouldn't pay for it.
 
the commercials are prob where most of their proffits come from.
 
Not only do they still make you watch ads, they make you watch the exact same ads repeatedly, which gets really annoying. But equally annoying as paying to watch ads: many of their TV shows require waiting as much as multiple weeks since the air-date before they are even available. Other TV shows cut off older episodes to where you cannot watch episodes earlier than a certain date. This is all with a paid account.

Often, the very shows that do this are owned/produced by Hulu's founding investors/partners - which eliminates the excuse that Netflix can sometimes use, "it isn't our fault, it's beyond our control what they give us."

I was willing to pay for a subscription, but all of these issues were getting worse over time instead of better, so I cancelled. I also cancelled my Netflix subscription when it was discovered they were cropping some of their content instead of streaming in full original aspect ratio (or at least giving the option to do so).
 
sonsonate said:
Nah, I don't pay for cable, but I do use OTA and I record and skip all that. I thought the point of online streaming was to avoid the commercials -- especially if you're paying for it, lol. When I first got Hulu, I said to myself, "Oh hmm, I'll pay and not have to watch any commercials." I had no clue that that wasn't the case. I really thought it was like Netflix. I get that they need to pay the bills, but the ads don't even begin to appeal to me (funny enough using OTA, I do sometimes just sit there and watch all the commercials) and there isn't, or doesn't seem to be, any way to view all the commercials at once like before.
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The point if online streaming is to get past cable companies, not ads. The first forms of online streaming came with ads, albeit in the beginning.

Anyways, ads are apart of the industry, the purpose of Hulu+ is to get it everywhere. I pay for it fit the convenience of getting it in all three rooms and while I'm out of town.
 
Surprised. I stopped watching about a year ago when hulu plus blocked shows and there were 4 commercials at a time.
 
They need a streaming plan for with commercials and without and just charge more for the without.
 
Semantics said:
You pay for cable? You pay to watch commercials on cable channels. To not watch commercials you pay for cable plus a premium channel that doesn't use commercials really like hbo. The payment is for access of more content and features to say watch it on your tv etc.
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Cable TV, Hulu, Xbox Live. Just some examples of scams I can't believe people pay for.
 
Wasn't Hulu having some trouble in the past? Guess they've turned it around; good for them.
 
We pay for cable but we only watch using Tivo to fast forward through the ads.
Been wanting to pay for Hulu+ but not if they put in so many unskipable ads. :-(
 
Megalith said:
Can someone tell me why anyone would pay for a service that still forces you to watch ads?
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Its a much cheaper way to watch TV shows than subscribing to cable or satellite. Netflix doesn't have everything, unfortunately.

The ads suck but other legal ways of watching TV shows cost significantly more per month.
 
sonsonate said:
I thought the point of online streaming was to avoid the commercials -- especially if you're paying for it, lol.
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Funny, I thought the point of online streaming was to watch something when you wanted to watch it and only watch shows you wanted to see, so you don't need to pay $70 a month for a basic package from cable or satellite only to find out you really only watch a half dozen channels at most because the channels you used to watch have turned into some incarnation of reality TV.
 
sfsuphysics said:
Funny, I thought the point of online streaming was to watch something when you wanted to watch it and only watch shows you wanted to see, so you don't need to pay $70 a month for a basic package from cable or satellite only to find out you really only watch a half dozen channels at most because the channels you used to watch have turned into some incarnation of reality TV.
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That's part of it but it's also because a lot of us are sick and tired of commercial breaks every 5 minutes. Regular TV is becoming unwatchable because of all the constant commercials. You're literally getting 5 minute's worth of commercials every 5 minutes and it won't be long before more than half the show will be commercials!!

I went to streaming because I canceled cable. I canceled cable because it wasn't worth $100 because I didn't watch much of it. I didn't watch much of it because of all the fucking commercials.

So yeah, getting away from commercials is a big part of why a lot of people do streaming services like Netflix and Amazon and why Hulu can eat a dick as far as I'm concerned.
 
I would sooner pay for Hulu+ then touch Amazon Prime streaming any day of the week. Between not being able to do HD streaming on my computer and having much of the stuff I searched for being an extra charge, I decided it was not worth it.

Oh well, to each their own. However, I have only Netflix streaming because the last time I tried Hulu+, much of the free content could not even be accessed. (That was at least 3 years ago though so it might have changed since then.)
 
Hulu used to be pretty decent. I remember a couple years back they would only have maybe 3 ads, for 30 seconds or less each. Now they tend to have 5+ ads for 1-2 minutes each. They've gotten greedy.
 
I subscribed to Hulu+ trial a while back but found that they were extremely slow implementing closed captioning in their older shows, if at all. Even some of their newer shows lack subtitles.

Netflix on the other hand made amazing strides captioning almost all of their shows, old and new.

I don't care about ads in Hulu as long as I could watch shows Netflix doesn't have, but the lack of captioning was a deal breaker as I'm hearing impaired.
 
Megalith said:
Can someone tell me why anyone would pay for a service that still forces you to watch ads?
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Probably the same mentality that causes people to stay with abusive spouses, bosses, etc.

Personally, I won't ever pay for a service that still forces me to suffer through an ever-increasing number (and length) of ads.
 
Hmm...I can pay $100 a month for cable TV and watch 12-15 minutes worth of ad's for a 30 minute show, or I can pay $8 a month for Hulu and watch the same shows with only about 3-5 minutes worth of ad's.

Seems like a no-brainer to me.
 
sonsonate said:
Nah, I don't pay for cable, but I do use OTA and I record and skip all that. I thought the point of online streaming was to avoid the commercials -- especially if you're paying for it, lol. When I first got Hulu, I said to myself, "Oh hmm, I'll pay and not have to watch any commercials." I had no clue that that wasn't the case. I really thought it was like Netflix. I get that they need to pay the bills, but the ads don't even begin to appeal to me (funny enough using OTA, I do sometimes just sit there and watch all the commercials) and there isn't, or doesn't seem to be, any way to view all the commercials at once like before.
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The point of online streaming is on-demand not commercial avoidance. Either you took on-demand or commercial avoidance for granted.

At least this is the thinking long those lines. Yes i'd prefer on-demand plus no commercials, will i get that? Don't know netflix works on that but i gets older content, thus less valuable content. Hulu also has free service along with it's premium which is what i think gets the idea of free means ads premium should mean no ads.
 
HydroBudz said:
Hmm...I can pay $100 a month for cable TV and watch 12-15 minutes worth of ad's for a 30 minute show, or I can pay $8 a month for Hulu and watch the same shows with only about 3-5 minutes worth of ad's.

Seems like a no-brainer to me.
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Well shows take up typically around 8-9 mins per half hour for ad space. Not sure on hulu's ad time per half hour.
 
pretty sure at least 50% of hulu subscribers didnt know half their content was removed and shown only on hulu.com and not huluplus
 
Semantics said:
Well shows take up typically around 8-9 mins per half hour for ad space. Not sure on hulu's ad time per half hour.
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Hulu usually injects no more than 30 seconds per ad, and maybe 3-4 ad's between segments. So basically 2 minutes worth of ads at a time. They run them at the same schedule so it's not like your show is being inundated with ads every 5 minutes to make up the difference. Plus sometimes they just skip an obvious ad break altogether and move on to the next scene (fade to black).
 
We've been using Hulu+ for a while now. They don't force you to watch the ads, you can always look away. Sure you can't fast forward through them, but they gotta make their money somewhere. For $8/mo it's so cheap for recent run content.

Some of you are just so standard Americans "I want what I want and I want it now, and I damn well better not have to pay for it neither!!!"
 
This thread somewhat reaffirms my decision for cutting the cord, getting a good OTA antenna, and using MCEBuddy for compression and commercial removal.

If only Movies! were available in more markets. From what I understand, there's commercials but no editing or formatting or throwing station logos or pimping some upcoming network programming.

http://moviestvnetwork.com/where-to-watch.php
 
Megalith said:
Can someone tell me why anyone would pay for a service that still forces you to watch ads?
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Sneak them into paid services slowly enough over the years and people won't pay much attention. It's becoming so common place people are starting to accept it as the norm these days, especially with a new generation growing up never having known what it was like to not be constantly inundated with advertising :p
 
I thought Hulu was fine during the first year, and it was a great time-killer working overnight in a data center when next to nothing happens. Haven't touched it since. Once I started seeing more than two ads in a 30 minute show and plans for Hulu Plus I saw the writing on the (pay)wall.
 
ManofGod said:
I would sooner pay for Hulu+ then touch Amazon Prime streaming any day of the week. Between not being able to do HD streaming on my computer and having much of the stuff I searched for being an extra charge, I decided it was not worth it.
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QFT. Also, Amazon Prime's streaming is shitty in general. I joined because they had some stuff that Netflix didn't but canceled because as the year wore on I was getting more than more pauses for buffering, to the point that their 360 app would error out completely. I thought it might be that the specific app was crap, but I checked it out on my mom's Roku and the same damn thing was happening. This is made all the sadder because Netflix actually uses Amazon cloud services and works like a dream.

On topic, Hulu+ is awesome if you don't have cable/satellite/OTA, especially if you don't want to deal with recording. Yeah, there are shows that work on the website but not through devices, but that's on the content providers, not Hulu. The ads are annoying but there are still fewer than on broadcast/"basic" cable, and the service is only $8 a damn month.

Then again, I'm not into getting my content illegally anymore, so if a person has no ethical problem with that then, yeah, Hulu+ would be a waste.
 
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