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Hulu to rival YouTube ad revenue
Online professional video service Hulu's US advertising revenue is poised to draw level with that of user-generated rival YouTube, according to a UK research group.
 YouTube, for which Google paid US$1.65bn in 2006, is by far the most trafficked site, with around 83 million unique visitors in the US in September against Hulu's six million. However, Hulu, a co-venture between News Corp and NBC Universal (NBCU), is due to equal the portal in terms of ad dollars from within the US within the next two years.
Screen Digest analyst Arash Amel has forecast that in 2008, YouTube will earn about US$100m in the US and Hulu around US$70m. Both sites will bring in around US$180m in 2009, according to Amel's predictions.
Speaking to C21, Amel said that Hulu's sophisticated understanding of web business had led to its rapid growth.
"They've taken the essential understanding of the disaggregated web and they've applied it to professional programming, and they're making money," he said. "They'll generate about US$70m this year with a 15% profit margin once they've paid their affiliates, tech costs and everything else."
The comparative statistics are mitigated to an extent by the fact that YouTube pulls in only around half of its advertising revenue from the US, while Hulu has yet to launch internationally - although it was in the early stages of talks with the BBC, ITV and Channel 4 about launching in the UK, as reported by C21.
Amel told the Financial Times that YouTube's results in the next year and a half could lead Google to determine that its purchase had been an "expensive mistake."
17 Nov 2008
© C21 Media 2008
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