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Hulu's Kilar: "Hulu Plus now a material portion" of Revenues
I was surprised to hear Hulu CEO Jason Kilar say in this short CNBC interview that while advertising accounts for the bulk of its revenues, Hulu Plus is "already accounting for a material portion" of its revenues. In the interview, Kilar had previously mentioned that in 2010 Hulu would generate $260 million in revenues, compared to $108 million in 2009, an impressive jump that beat its internal target of $190 million.
However, it's hard to see how, just a month after its formal launch, Hulu Plus could already be material to Hulu's performance. Even if it had 500,000 subscribers (which feels optimistic), that would be $4 million/mo (at its $8/mo rate) in subscription revenue, whereas Hulu may well be generating $25-30 million/mo in ad revenue to get to the $260M figure. Maybe it's just a definition of what's "material." As I've said before though, the bigger question is how Hulu Plus competes on the content acquisition front. With the recent Disney-ABC and NBCU content deals, Netflix is undermining Hulu Plus' core broadcast TV value proposition and people who subscribe to both Netflix and Hulu Plus will quickly see this.Categories: Aggregators