Hulu delivered over one billion ads in October. That was headline news yesterday after comScore released the latest incarnation of its monthly U.S. Online Video Rankings. But what else can we take away from the internet marketing research company’s online video charts? With a calculator and eighth grade algebra, you can figure out a handful of great statistics.
How about how often viewers see video ads?
The average Hulu viewer watched 207.8 minutes of online video in October. During that time, Hulu delivered 1.1 billion ads at a rate of 38.1 ads per viewer. If you take the minutes of online video per viewer, and divide that by the frequency of video ads per viewer, you find your everyday consumer of Hulu watches one video ad every five minutes and 27 seconds.
That may seem like a lot of advertising, but the number isn’t all that surprising. Your regular, 22-minute television sitcom schedules an ad break roughly once every six minutes. Most Hulu users visit Hulu to watch on-demand TV. The timing of commercial breaks inserted into television shows stays constant, regardless of the viewing platform. So, it makes sense for you watch an ad on Hulu about as often as you see a commercial break on TV.
What makes less sense is how often you view a video ad on YouTube.
The average YouTube viewer watched 271.6 minutes of online video in October. During that time, YouTube delivered 170 million ads at a frequency of 4.1 ads per viewer. Take those stats and you find your everyday consumer of YouTube watches one video ad every 66 minutes and 14 seconds. That’s not a lot of advertising!
The advertising frequency gap between Hulu and YouTube has a lot to do with a financial problem YouTube’s struggled with since its inception: amateur content.
Unless you’re an uploader who is part of YouTube’s Partner Program, ads aren’t going to appear within your videos. The vast majority of the 35 hours of content uploaded to YouTube every minute comes in the form of homemade movies shot by amateurs, against which YouTube can’t advertise. To be the biggest online video site in the world means having a helluva lot of inventory that doesn’t make you money.
Hulu’s the exact opposite. All of its content comes from premium providers and is advertiser friendly. The same brands comfortable advertising on broadcast NBC also feel okay throwing ad dollars Hulu’s way.
Long-form videos also comprise the majority of Hulu’s inventory and present more advertising opportunities. People who watch installments of The Office on Hulu are going to tune in until they’re finished, and suffer through the two or three commercial breaks it takes to get to the end of an episode. An episode of The Guild lasts nine minutes on YouTube, and you only have to watch one commercial when it starts.
Looking at these numbers it’s no surprise Hulu’s been able to turn a profit within its first year of operations while YouTube’s still not quite in the black. I realize there are many idiosyncrasies involved with running a multi-billion dollar media corporation, but if Eric Schmidt and company can focus on increasing the frequency that YouTube viewers watch video ads, it may be the quickest way to help the company’s bottom line.
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[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Tubefilter and Web Series Directory, web television. web television said: You Watch One YouTube Ad Every 66 Minutes: Hulu delivered over one billion ads in October. Th… http://bit.ly/dARLA2 #webseries [...]
Unless you know the ratio of partner content views vs UGC views there really isn’t much you can deduct from ad serving frequency and YouTube’s potential.
[...] • Mid-Roll Growing In Popularity (Online Media Daily): At least it’s better than the utterly useless post-roll. Also: Hulu serves 1 billion ads, while YouTube serves one every 66 minutes. [...]
I think you can actually deduct a lot. With these types of stats, you can figure out different ways to attack the problem. Maybe there’s a way YouTube could monetize at least some portion of UGC content? Maybe they could tweak the barriers to entry for their Partner Program? Maybe they could figure out ways to get more people to watch a greater percentage of Partner content?
[...] Kevin Mohr: You Watch One YouTube Ad Every 66 Minutes (news.tubefilter.tv) [...]
[...] • Dying Chatroulette Sparked Offshoots and Copycats (New York Times): At least it’s better than the utterly useless post-roll. Also: Hulu serves 1 billion ads, while YouTube serves one every 66 minutes. [...]
[...] YouTube Trends is a brand new YouTube destination devoted to making sense of the 35 hours of video uploaded to the site every minute, as well as the viewing actions of over 146,000,000 unique monthly visitors. [...]
good one. nice and good site.
[...] Like AOL, Yahoo’s leveraging its massive traffic (179,000,000+ monthly uniques) and turning those visitors into views. When you have a slate of web series that’s advertiser-friendly and reaches at least 71 million eyeballs in less than nine months, who needs to be a hub for user-generated content, on which no one will advertise? [...]
[...] According to comScore’s just-released December 2010 U.S. Online Video Rankings, Hulu delivered 1,227,929,000 video ads for the month. Everyone who watched Hulu in December also spent an average of 217.1 minutes consuming content on the site and saw approximately 47.1 video ads. That means your everyday consumer of Hulu watched one video ad every 4 minutes and 37 seconds. That’s a 15% increase in the frequency of ads served by Hulu in just three months! comScore’s October 2010 U.S. Online Video Rankings showed your everyday consumer of Hulu watched one video ad every 5 minutes and 27 seconds. [...]
[...] watched one video ad on Hulu every five minutes and 27 seconds in October 2010 according to comScore’s U.S. Online Video Rankings. By December 2010, the [...]