Hulu's trying to give a new spin to the adage that second place is just the first loser. The jointly owned catch-up online video platform landed squarely in second place--again--behind perennial first-place finisher YouTube in comScore's April video site rankings, but the company says it's doing something few of its competitors can claim: making a profit.
Not only is it making money--it had revenues of more than $100 million last year and said it was profitable in 4Q2009 and 1Q2010--it says it's on track to take in double the revenue in 2010. But how profitable is Hulu? Well, that's a little tougher, since it gives at least 50 percent of its ad sales to its triumvirate of owners, NBC Universal, Disney and New Corp.
Hulu has maintained 900 million to a billion views for the past six months after adding ABC shows to its line up. Since then... growth has essentially been flat.
Overall, comScore said 178 million viewers watched 30.3 billion videos in April. YouTube racked up 13 billion views and 136 million viewers.
Vevo continues to gain views since launching in December 2009, recording 331 million views and 43.6 million viewers.
For more:
- see this release
- see this All Things Digital article
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