COLOGNE – While the present may seem like the heyday of skinny bundles, things are just getting started. Take Hulu’s recent partnering with Spotify for college students and the pairing of Netflix and T-Mobile.
“We talk about bundling products and we talk about bundling video products together, but I think what’s interesting is the opportunity to bundle more than just video with video,” says Peter Naylor, SVP, Advertising Sales, Hulu.
“Even Amazon is bundling shipping with video. So I think bundles are going to leap beyond video and go multidimensional, multimedia,” Naylor adds in this interview with Beet.TV at the 2017 DMEXCO advertising and media trade show.
Founded in 2007 by three traditional broadcast networks, Hulu earlier this year debuted its own live package consisting of more than 50 channels. Since then it’s added The CW Network and more than 200 local TV affiliates. “Depending on where you, are you’re getting not only national feeds but local content as well. So that’s going very well,” Naylor says.
Beginning on Sept. 12, subscribers to the T-Mobile ONE plan with at least two phones on their plan were able to stream Netflix programming at no additional cost.
“While the big bundle collapses, people will reassemble their own bundles in more of an a la carte fashion. It will be interesting to see how many relationships viewers want with different services.”
Naylor says advertising on Hulu is “healthy and vital right now,” given that the majority of people who sign up opt for the ad-supported version. And while 15- and 30-second ads “are totally welcome” on the platform, he sees creative opportunity in interactive advertising.
“We partner with people like Brightline, for example, for interactive advertising. We’re doing a lot of integrations.”
Naylor cites as examples the season and series finale of The Mindy Project, in which brands like McDonald’s, Sprint and Volkswagen have show integrations. “So we have some of the best of old school TV with integrations and the best of new TV with interactive ads.”
At the 69th Emmy awards, Hulu achieved a milestone when it not only tied for most wins of the night–five, along with HBO–but its original production The Handmaid’s Tale made it the first streaming service to take home the Emmy for Outstanding Drama Series, as The Verge reports.
While many advertisers are still content to transact on age and demographics mostly with 15’s and 30’s, “I think you’re seeing a more layered and nuanced approach because data is only increasing with advanced TV capabilities.”
This is accompanied by a rise in attribution measurement. “It’s not just did my ad get served in a way that’s viewable and, frankly, non- fraudulent but did it move the needle for my business,” says Naylor.
This video was produced as part of Beet.TV leadership series from DMEXCO, presented by NBCUniversal. For more videos from the series, please visit this page.
