Hulu’s advertising income “barely” covers its bandwidth bill? http://bit.ly/aUzB7V Doesn’t auger well for advertising supported video.
For the longest time I’ve been saying that advertising is not going to be the way media is supported in the future. It will be part of the picture but branded media – where the advertiser has cut-through and clear branding (also called Hyperdistribution by some) – and direct payment will be much more likely. Remember the only truly successful distribution model online is Apple’s iTunes store, even though the media there is seriously overpriced.
“It’s an important issue, because any debate about Hulu is a debate about the future of purely ad-supported TV, which is increasingly becoming an endangered species. Hulu is the No. 2 video site on sheer volume of video views behind YouTube, yet no one is yet making much money from its model: not its network backers, other content partners and least of all Hulu itself, which has a hard time paying for its bandwidth bills.”