Entries tagged with “hulu” from Tools of Change for Publishing

Analytics: Are Streams the New Hits?

Mac Slocum
October 30, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0) | Listen

Web analytics folks have been trying for years to remove the term "hits" from the analytics lexicon because it's an inherently flaky measurement (one Web page could theoretically yield hundreds of hits). That same flakiness has unfortunately infiltrated another measurement tool: "streams," a key metric for online video.

An off-hand mention in a New York Times article reveals cracks in the "stream" definition:

Despite all the experimentation, it is still difficult to know exactly how many viewers are watching individual TV shows and movies online. Hulu ranks its most popular content, but unlike YouTube it doesn't show the view count for each video. Still, it is clear that millions of viewers are watching some shows online. The Season 3 premiere of "Heroes" in September was streamed 8.1 million times on Hulu and NBC.com, according to the network. (All online streams are not counted as equal, because on NBC.com each segment of an episode is counted as a stream, so a full episode could count as six streams. On Hulu, one episode equals one stream.) [Emphasis added.]

This is a problem. Most digital content models rely on advertising as a revenue stream, and ad rates are generally associated with key analytics (impressions, page views, unique users, streams, clicks, etc.). Redefining a common metric puts the entire industry in flux because advertisers rarely buy inventory on one site. Now they'll need to monitor both their active campaigns as well as variations in campaign metrics (ie -- is this a Hulu stream or an NBC stream?). The last thing digital content needs is more complexity.

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• Web Analytics Primer for Publishers
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• Finding Balance Between User Experience and Web Ads
• Piracy and Advertising: An Unlikely Union that Just Might Work
• Free Ebooks with Embedded Ads Via Scribd-Lulu Partnership

Mark Cuban: Copyright Law Gives Hulu Advantage Over YouTube

Peter Brantley
June 17, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (1) | Listen

Mark Cuban says the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (PDF) gives Hulu a distinct advantage over YouTube:

Hulu has one HUGE advantage over YouTube, it has the right to sell advertising in and around every single video on its site. It can package and sell any way that might make its customers happy. YouTube on the other hand, has that right for only the small percentage of the videos on its site that it has a licensing deal with. For probably 99pct or more of the videos on the site, YouTube isn't supposed to know what they even are.

How can that be? Because YouTube hides behind the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Hulu is a media site that presents videos with advertising. It can do whatever it wants. YouTube is a hosting service. It's not allowed to know what videos are uploaded by users and its not allowed to generate revenue against those videos. It can only sell advertising around videos it has licenses to.

Related Stories:

• Study: Web Video Audience Stabilizes and Consumes More Streams
• Sorting through Layers of Copyright
• Some Quotables from OnCopyright 2008
• Orphan Works Legislation and Copyright Conundrums
• Copyright Clearance and Transaction Use Permits