Where Did Hulu’s Advertising Go?
It wasn’t too long ago that NBC Universal president and chief executive Jeff Zucker pronounced Hulu a raging success, touting the fact that the site had totally sold through its advertising inventory as evidence. If that was true back in April, it may not be the case now. The only ads we seem to see on Hulu are either public service announcements (such as the ad on the right) or they’re house ads for networks whose programming appears on the site. The implication is that there’s a lot of content that isn’t being monetized. Hulu spokeswoman Christina Lee argues that the problem isn’t a lack of demand for ads, rather it’s that the site has experienced “such tremendous growth” that it’s still “growing the ad sales team to meet demand.” Lee also adds that the public service announcements may be served as part of a survey recently conducted in which participants were rewarded with ad impressions for their favorite charity for answering the survey questions. In either event, it looks like th
