Hulu CEO: We'll make $240M in 2010
Hulu chief executive Jason Kilar shared some numbers today to show where the online TV service stood at the end of October. — The service launched its beta test almost exactly three years ago, so while the service is relatively early, Kilar said …
Context & Ripple Effects
Jason Kilar's $240M projection lands four months after his July interview covering Hulu Plus, a possible IPO and site renovations, and it is the first hard revenue figure in that arc — offered as the service passes three years since its beta launch. It reframes Hulu from promotional experiment into a measurable business.
The subscription side of that business is the weak point: an August analysis confirmed that over 88% of full-length episodes sold in the $10/month Hulu Plus tier were already free on Hulu.com, and an October report that Hulu might cut Plus to $4.95 remains unconfirmed. Hulu also carries a legal overhang from the July federal suit over Flash 'zombie' cookies that names it alongside MTV, ESPN, MySpace, ABC and NBC.
First-order effects
- The $240M figure gives Hulu's broadcast partners their first concrete read on ad-supported streaming scale three years in, sharpening the decision Kilar left open in July about whether to pursue an IPO he has so far only discussed, not confirmed.
- Hulu Plus faces immediate pricing pressure: with 88% of its catalog already free, hitting Kilar's number likely depends on either the rumored $4.95 tier materializing or converting free viewers, neither of which is settled.
Second-order effects
- If Plus does reprice toward the rumored $4.95, the free tier's ad inventory becomes the real profit engine — which raises the stakes of the zombie-cookie lawsuit for Hulu and its co-defendants, since behavioral targeting built on Flash storage underpins that ad revenue.
- A credible revenue disclosure makes the IPO conversation harder for Hulu's stakeholders to defer: going public would subject the ads-versus-subscription mix to quarterly scrutiny exactly when the Plus value question is unresolved.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, TV networks will treat ad-funded online distribution as a permanent revenue line rather than a marketing window, forcing subscription tiers to earn their fees through genuine exclusivity instead of repackaged free content.
- Privacy litigation over tracking technologies like Flash cookies points toward compliance costs becoming a structural feature of ad-supported video, shaping how services like Hulu target and measure audiences.
The trend: Online television is shifting from a free catch-up window into a dual-revenue business built on advertising plus subscriptions, with Hulu's first disclosed revenue projection marking its arrival as a line item broadcasters must plan around.