Hulu saw revenues grow to $420 million in 2011, a 60 percent bump from 2010, said CEO Jason Kilar, in a blog post. He also said the content aggregator currently has more than 1.5 million customers for its premium service, Hulu Plus.
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Hulu Plus offers current season content from 5 of the 6 largest U.S. broadcast networks. |
Kilar said the dual revenue stream for Hulu Plus has enabled it to pay content owners approximately 50 percent more in content licensing fees per subscriber when compared to other similarly priced online subscription services. And that, he believes, will help Hulu secure more content. For 2012, he said, Hulu plans to spend some $500 million on content acquisition.
Kilar said Hulu expects its premium service to account for more than half of its overall business by the latter part of 2012, and said the site currently is seeing twice as many subscribers every day as compared to a year ago.
Key to the growth in 2011, he said, was the addition of significant amounts of content; Hulu Plus saw content offerings grow 105 percent, and the free service added about 40 percent more, he said. Hulu Plus now offers current-season content from five of the six largest U.S. broadcasters.
Kilar said Hulu also increased the array of devices it was available on, including Microsoft Xbox 360, Amazon's Kindle Fire, Barnes and Noble's NOOK Tablet, select Android smartphones, LG, Panasonic and VIZIO TVs and Blu-ray players.
For more:
- see this Hulu blog entry
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