Months in the making, Hulu chose the Digital Content NewFronts – a showcase for online publishers to tout their wares to advertisers – to unveil its new live TV service, promising consumers a way to cut their cable cord whist continuing to receive premium TV channels.
The company launched the new service in beta on a number of digital devices, with more to follow, and the details are finally out – a confirmed pricepoint of $39.99 per month gets users more than 50 channels, 50 hours of cloud recording, simultaneous streaming to two devices and continued access to Hulu’s library of on-demand content, with confirmed partners now including:
- Scripps
- NBCU
- 21st Century Fox
- Walt Disney Company
- CBS
- A+E Networks
- Turner
“Our skinny bundle isn’t so skinny,” Hulu ad sales SVP Peter Naylor told Beet.TV in this video interview at the NewFronts event in New York. “We’re a very attractive pricepoint to a lot of people contemplating how they get their TV. So the programmers want to be there.”
But, despite all this premium programming for a monthly subscription, Hulu is not jettisoning advertising as a monetization model. In fact, Naylor is keen to outline an advertiser offering that is beefed up with latest ad-tech.
“Like all the conventional MVPDs… we’re a digital MVPD, so I’ll get two minutes an hour in the cable opportunities,” Naylor adds. “We have a whole host of (advertising) opportunities salt-and-peppered throughout our cloud DVR, where we have inventory to bring to market. The new interface gives me a new opportunity to package up sponsorships as well.”
“We anticipate it will be dynamically-inserted ads, everything inserted through an IP address. We have so much information on our subscribers and viewers that we can taylor the ads for those two minutes in a way that’s household-addressable. We’re already doing it in our video-on-demand product.”
Hulu told Beet.TV back in March it was working with an SSP (supply-side platform) to offer automated solutions and to allow advertisers the opportunity to combine their data with its own to bring more effective targeting, integrating with a number of data providers.
This approach will give Hulu continuity across its on-demand offering, where dynamic ad insertion has been most prevalent in the industry, and live TV, which is ripe to start adopting the same kind of techniques.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvmiRhdnrrk
But the new-look Hulu will get most attention for its appealing new interface. Features include the ability to “save anything to watch later, pause Live TV and pick up where you left off, and get real-time alerts for live events and TV moments that matter to you”, the company says, as well as viewer profiles and multiple at-home streams.
Hulu – a joint venture between ABC, 21st Century Fox, NBCUniversal and Turner Broadcasting System – has long been the broadcasters’ favoured aggregator for delivering shows on-demand. But few viewers watch either on-demand or live exclusively anymore.
The next imperative in TV is about experience, and bringing together both live and VOD.
This video is part of Beet.TV’s coverage of the IAB’s Digital Content NewFronts 2017. The series is sponsored by the IAB. For more videos from the #NewFronts, please visit this page.
