Hulu seeing impressive growth

Chris Caceres · December 30, 2009 · Short URL: https://vator.tv/n/cc1

Video streaming site shares statistics for 2009

At its initial launch, the video streaming site Hulu was mainly used by tech geeks like myself who knew about it. Soon enough in 2009, through word of mouth and one very famous Superbowl ad about an alien plot to destroy the world, Hulu exploded and the numbers show it.

Jason Kilar, CEO of Hulu posted several impressive stats on Wednesday showcasing Hulu's biggest highlights of 2009.

First off, Hulu is seeing extreme growth. Kilar said that monthly users of Hulu as measured by comScore grew to over 43 million, which is a 95 percent increase from this same time last year. Video streams grew to over 924 million which is a 307 percent increase over this time last year.

The company has also doubled its library of videos. Hulu now offers 14,000 hours of premium content, which us from 5,600 hours at the same time last year. This is due in part that the company has also grown its list of content partners from 130 to 200.

As for advertising, Hulu's number of clients has doubled: last year it served 166 advertisers/marketers. This year it's served 408. Kilar commented, "As a team, we are extremely excited about the atypically strong results we have been able to drive for our marketing partners."

Much of this impressive growth can be attributed to several innovations Hulu has released throughout the year including the Hulu Desktop client, captions search, continuous play, and tagging.

Kilar commented, "We recognize that what we are aspiring to do is extremely ambitious and filled with considerable risk. But that has always been the nature of this pioneering journey. We have incredible conviction both in our product vision and in our customer obsession."

We'll see if Hulu can continue this growth next year as sites like YouTube and services like Apple's iTunes may begin to offer premium full-length content following similar models to Hulu. All in all, online video consumption continues to rise every month, according to Nielsen. Hulu continues to rank number two behind YouTube which holds a tight grasp onto that number one spot.