Changing the Game of Advertising
Posted at 5:13pm EST on 01/30/2009
I am an avid fan of Hulu.com and what it has to offer me. Often, I will not be at home and I don’t currently have a DVR, so I can’t record it. Hulu is a great solution for me.
Lately, I’ve started noticing what Hulu is doing differently. Hulu started offering an “all or nothing” advertising choice.
How is this different?
This kind of advertising is quite different than what we are used to. Typically, when watching a show like House or 24, we expect that the show is broken up into different segments, separated by commercial; typically lasting anywhere from 30 seconds to 120 seconds (2 minutes). That’s just what we are accustomed to here in the US.
Hulu has introduced a new kind of advertising. A long pre-roll ad. In the instance above, you can watch a 2 minute trailer for the upcoming movie Taken as an alternative to watching show ads in between the typical breaks in the show.
The default setting when you click on an episode is to watch the 2 minute trailer, then go to your show and watch it through entirely without any commercial interruptions.
I am sure that Hulu is getting paid a very high CPM for these ads, otherwise it would not be set as the default selection.
I do not have much or any experience in television advertising, so I do not know the kind of CPMs that are being paid out for viewership. I can only imagine that Hulu is getting paid very high, in the thousands or tens of thousands per CPM (one thousand views).
How is this changing the game?
This kind of advertising is different than what we have experienced in the past and very well could change the game completely. You now have a captive audience for 2 minutes to watch a trailer, rather than just a typical advertisement.
My first experience with this type of advertising on Hulu was very positive. After the trailer played, I had forgotten that I was watching House. I felt very engulfed in the trailer. But, the next time I went to go watch a show and chose this option, I knew I had 2 minutes, so I walked around and grabbed some food.
At the same time while this type of advertising can be very powerful, it is also just as wasteful as having an advertisement longer than 15 seconds or 30 seconds could lead people away, as it did for me.
I think Hulu is really onto something here, but it needs time to be perfected.
