The streaming movie and TV show service Hulu gave an update on both its subscribers and its overall revenues in a blog post on Thursday. The company said that it went over the 1.5 million paid subscriber mark for its premium Hulu Plus service. Hulu said, "Hulu Plus has reached 1.5 million paid subscribers faster than any video subscription service launch (online or offline) in U.S. history."
Hulu"s owners had though about selling off the company in 2011 but later announced in October that Hulu would take down the virtual "For Sale" sign.
Overall revenues for Hulu, which also includes money from ads, came in at $420 million for 2011, a 60 percent increase compared to 2010. The blog post said, "Overall the Hulu ad business grew aggressively and Hulu Plus materially exceeded our plan." Hulu also added a number of hardware platforms where users can download and user Hulu Plus apps in 2011, including the Xbox 360, Wii and 3DS consoles.
Hulu believes that it"s combination of advertising in the videos it streams with the Hulu Plus subscription service gives it an advantage over other similar services such as Netflix. It states:
At scale, our model allows us to profitably pay content owners approximately 50 (percent) more in content licensing fees per subscriber when compared to other similarly priced online subscription services. We believe our approach will enable us to secure more valuable content for our users and to secure content in more attractive windows than would otherwise be possible.
Hulu says it will spend $500 million to secure more content for the service in 2012.