Comments on: Without Colbert, Stewart, Hulu Could Cede Some Ground To Viacom

By: steve85

steve85 — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 21:51:55 +0000

We can expect to see Comedy Central work a deal with Hulu at some point. The type of advertising that Hulu offers is too beneficial for any network to pass up. Yes their traffic numbers aren’t as profound as youtube, but when it comes to visitors, uniqueness is the important factor. http://www.weltbranding.com/blog/2010/03/much-ado-about-hulu/ tells why a deal is in the future for Comedy Central and Hulu.

By: DavidS

DavidS — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 23:10:45 +0000

Very good point ChrisB. There’s generally a clear user preference for “one-stop shopping” i.e. aggregators, something that Hulu, given the strength of its UX, is well positioned to benefit from. This really manifests in the engagement metrics (i.e. ad impressions per viewer aka $$$) rather than reach per se, which just isn’t as important. When the web becomes the first place where people go to consume television content, I think search (which in this space is heavily driven by on air programming schedules and release windows at present) will be relatively less important for content discovery.

By: Chris B.

Chris B. — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 22:33:52 +0000

I find it interesting that this article chooses to highlight (with bolded text as well as with emphasis in wording) the “unique viewers” metric employed by comScore while downplaying the “videos viewed” information.

While it’s true that both sites are very close in the number of unique viewers, I would say that the number of videos actually watched by those unique viewers is a more telling measurement of the watchability and ease of use. By this metric, Viacom has less than 40% of the figures of Hulu: rating 361M to Hulu’s #2 spot of more than 900M. More and more households are streaming content from sites to televisions, and streaming off of one portal is much easier than dozens of host sites. Viacom is making the same mistake it made in 2007 when it pushed all its video content off of YouTube: always one step behind trends, it is operating off increasingly inaccurate assumptions.

By: Phoebe_b

Phoebe_b — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 12:13:45 +0000

Ultimately I don’t think viewers care where the content is hosted, so if video becomes more splintered across competing sites, viewers will probably rely more on search and discovery engines that can show all the options, then point to where to watch.