Hulu is using its advertising upfront presentation at Madison Square Garden Theater today to reveal its subscriber base has grown more than 30 percent year-over-year and will reach 12 million subscribers in the U.S. by this month.
The company has been creating buzz this week online with a report in the Wall Street Journal — which was then confirmed by the New York Times — that it’s aiming to develop a new skinny bundle subscription service of not only on-demand but live programming to take on traditional pay TV offerings. The bundle would reportedly include broadcast and cable channels, in particular those from 21st Century Fox, Walt Disney Company and Comcast NBCUniversal, which all co-own Hulu.
The WSJ report underlined that Hulu hasn’t set a price for the service, but added that a Sanford C. Bernstein media analyst estimated it probably would go for about $40 a month.
“I don’t think we are designing this for people that are really happy with their pay TV service,” Hulu CEO Mike Hopkins tells the NYT. “This is designed for the people that the marketplace is concerned are falling out of love with pay TV.”
Hulu also is announcing a partnership with interactive advertising company BrightLine at today’s advertiser event. It says it will allow it to be the first streaming service to deliver first-to-market interactive advertising units built exclusively for the living room and connected TVs.
A new collaboration with Nielsen is also being revealed that reportedly will enable digital ad measurement through Nielsen Digital Ad Ratings to capture OTT viewing in the living room environment for the first time ever.
“This will be the first comprehensive ad measurement solution to debut across living room platforms from Roku and PlayStation to Xbox and Apple TV and all Hulu-enabled living room devices,” Hulu reports in a statement. “Through the collaboration, Hulu will have the capability to deliver the accurate measurement of viewership beyond the PC for advertisers on a campaign level basis.”
In addition, Hulu announced it will begin to provide increased advertising effectiveness insights and tools through a new partnership with market research firm Millward Brown. The partnership will deliver studies, research papers and stats including brand affinity metrics for marketers and advertisers that will span OTT viewing environments.