Hulu is on track to pull in about $500 million in revenue this year and the company should produce about $300 million in revenue for the content suppliers who provide Hulu with programming in 2011, reports Jason Kilar, Hulu's CEO, in a recent blog.
The results provide further evidence that Hulu and other online players are beginning to provide significant revenues for content rights holders. "We're excited about that number [the $300 million in revenue for content suppliers] and we also expect it to grow aggressively in the years to come," he wrote.
Kilar also reported that Hulu's first quarter revenues were up 90% over a year earlier, though he provided no specific dollar amount, and he noted that Hulu had about $263 million in revenue in 2010.
On the advertising front, Kilar added that "we served approximately 50 percent more advertisers in Q1 2011 than we did in Q1 2010 (specifically, 289 advertisers in Q1 2011, up from 194 in Q1 2010)."
The company also expanded the number of content partners to 264 in the first quarter of 2011 from 211 a year earlier, in part because of the deal with Viacom. Usage also climbed, with 10% more streams in the first quarter of this year over the fourth quarter of 2010.
Hulu's push to move to a mix of free and pay content also seems to be paying off. "We are on track to exceed 1 million Hulu Plus subscribers in 2011," Kilar wrote. "To our knowledge, this is the fastest start of any online video subscription service."
