Only three months in, and 2009 is already proving to be a big year for Hulu. In early February, the premium online video provider launched an aggressive TV advertising campaign with a high-profile (and subsequently highly acclaimed) Super Bowl commercial. The response, and resulting traffic increase on Hulu, was staggering. According to Nielsen VideoCensus, users streamed more than 308 million videos from Hulu in February -- a 30 percent increase over Hulu's January traffic, and a five-fold increase since May 2008. Those figures pushed Hulu into the No. 2 slot behind YouTube, in terms of online video sites.
That's some noteworthy progress, given that Hulu just celebrated the one-year anniversary of its public debut. In conjunction with this milestone, on March 12, the company rolled out a new social networking feature, called Hulu Friends, which enables users to see what shows and movies people in their existing social networks are watching and how they rate them. For advertisers on the site, that's just one more level of insight that Hulu now has into its already engaged user base.
According to Hulu CEO Jason Kilar, the company is just warming up. In a recent interview with iMedia, Kilar discussed the continuing evolution of the online video marketing landscape, Hulu's role within it, and his vision for the future.
Jason Kilar is CEO of Hulu. iMedia: Within less than a year of its public debut, Hulu has gone from being a virtually unknown online video site to practically a household name. In your mind, was there a moment or an event that enabled the company to turn this corner?
Jason Kilar: There are three moments that come to mind for me as being milestones in terms of measuring progress as a company in this first year.
The first one was at midnight East Coast time on Oct. 29, 2007. That was the first moment that we allowed people with a password to use a test version of Hulu -- it was a private beta. In addition to having people use the service with a password, there were also a number of journalists who got a sneak view in the 72-hour period prior to that. The embargo lifted, and that was when they published their thoughts on Hulu. We were very humbled by the response of the press, the bloggers, and also the users in those first, literally, 30 to 45 minutes following midnight East Coast time on Oct. 29. That was one moment that was very defining for us.
The other two were much more public moments. When Tina Fey started to impersonate Sarah Palin on "Saturday Night Live," that was a big moment for the Hulu brand. People were so interested in finding that content, and they came to Hulu to watch it.
The third milestone for us was the night of this year's Super Bowl, on Feb. 1, when we did something that was not subtle. We had our first advertising campaign launch in the fourth quarter of a hotly contested Super Bowl. We were fortunate to have Alec Baldwin be a part of that, and it was a very big moment for the company, and continues to be so.
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