Why Hulu won’t run pre-roll ads
Cory Bergman November 1st, 2007
Hulu is running short sponsorship announcements (:05ish) before show episodes, but not pre-rolls. “We think it’s a higher quality experience for users and advertisers alike,” said Jason Kilar, the former Amazon.com executive who is Hulu’s CEO. An average of two minutes of ads will appear inside a 30-minute episode, just not at the beginning. Hulu’s thinking mirrors Google’s recent research that discovered that pre-rolls are a poor user experience.
Also, following up from my earlier review of Hulu, I’m still very impressed with the site’s video quality. I watched a full-screen episode the other night, and it was the best streaming experience I’ve had — even beating Joost. BUT, BUT… the big caveat is that Hulu is still in private beta with very few users. It will be interesting to see if it can scale while retaining this level of quality and fast response.
6 Comments Add your own
1. Charles | November 1st, 2007 at 12:21 pm
If I’m reading this correctly, then Hulu’s ads work like ABC.com’s? That’s pretty cool, I like that system a lot…
2. Safran | November 1st, 2007 at 12:24 pm
I’m all for shorter ads. The experience I had watching a show on Hulu was that the same ad showed in each of the breaks. This happens on ABC.com shows too. Even if it’s the same sponsor, how hard can it be to have a different ad?
3. invitedmedia | November 1st, 2007 at 12:55 pm
and in other news, “belo promotes 4 tv execs”.
any additional scratch coming your “online” way cory?
4. Rick | November 1st, 2007 at 1:36 pm
The interesting thing is that apparently the ads won’t play if you switch browser windows when the ad starts. The ad will pause until you look at that browser window again, which is an evil but clever solution to those of us who bounce around from window to window while watching video.
5. discreet_chaos | November 1st, 2007 at 3:44 pm
Pretty much all of the streaming offerings from all of the networks have a single thirty-second ad at each break. For some reason, the CW’s is q
6. discreet_chaos | November 1st, 2007 at 3:50 pm
(I have no idea of what happened above; Sorry)
Pretty much all of the streaming offerings from all of the networks have a single thirty-second ad at each break. For some reason, the CW’s is quite a bit louder than the actual program and a couple of the networks make you click to continue, but other than one or two very popular shows which have two ads per break, they all have one or none.
Also, I agree with Safran’s comment about mixing-up the ads. The Sprint thing that shows six different mini-videos over the course of an hour is one solution, but I’d really like to give kudos to Papa John’s for their ads which are each differently scripted, but they all show an attractive girl hovered over a laptop, supposedly watching a streaming video and making reference to “the show”.
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