LAS VEGAS – Pity the lowly digital video recorder. If media companies like Hulu had their druthers, it would go the way of the hula hoop (sorry Wham-O).
It’s no surprise that people like Peter Naylor, Hulu’s SVP of Advertising Sales, have set their sights on the DVR. They see it as a Pleistocene relic in an age of rising over-the-top, on-demand content viewing.
“With a DVR, putting hard drives in everyone’s home I think is really disruptive to the business,” Naylor says while attending the annual Nielsen Consumer 360 conference. “Because we’re allowing people just to record and time shift their viewing into these way down the road viewing sessions.”
Companies like Hulu believe it would be far better for advertisers, broadcasters and viewers to embrace dynamic ad insertion and VOD behavior so as to recoup lost commercial impressions.
“Irrespective of what someone’s watching, we serve this moment’s ad,” Naylor says. “So we’re not talking about C3 or C7. It’s C infinity.”
In addition to the growing demand for OTT viewing, Hulu is seeing a big shift to living room devices connected via Roku, PlayStation, Apple TV and Chromecast. “All these devices are increasingly easy for consumers to get their heads around and they’ve figured out how to make it all happen,” Naylor says. “When you’re watching long-form content, you’re going to watch on the best screen available, which is typically your living room.”
Hulu is wading deeper into the original content waters, working with such talent as Amy Poehler, Mindy Kaling and Ron Howard, the latter of whom is directing a documentary called Eight Days A Week that chronicles the early Beatles years.
“To top that off, we’re going to have yet another election special with Triumph the Insult Comic Dog,” says Naylor.
This video is part of series produced at Consumer 360. The series is sponsored by Nielsen. Please visit this page for additional segments.
