Netflix is for Movies, Hulu is for TV Shows. Neither Is for Your iPad or Your iPhone.
Lots of you are using your phones to watch YouTube. But Netflix and Hulu? Not so much. — That's one of the take-aways from a new Nielsen report about viewing habits on the two online video services.
Context & Ripple Effects
Nielsen's new report puts hard numbers behind a split that has been forming since at least February 2010, when TechCrunch reported Hulu could still launch on the iPad and the service's mobile presence remained unresolved. The firm now finds the two services have settled into distinct content identities: Netflix viewing skews heavily toward movies, Hulu's toward TV shows.
The more striking finding is on devices: despite the iPad and iPhone being the most talked-about screens in online video, Nielsen says neither Netflix nor Hulu gets meaningful use there, while phones are heavily used for YouTube. That makes the mobile gap a strategic problem for both services rather than a technical footnote.
First-order effects
- Netflix and Hulu are effectively ceding the phone and tablet screen to YouTube, whose short-form format is what people actually watch there — leaving the two services competing mainly on the living-room computer and connected TV.
Second-order effects
- Apple benefits from the status quo, since YouTube-heavy iPhone and iPad usage sells its devices while the absence of Netflix and Hulu apps removes the main reason those screens would substitute for a TV; pressure builds on both services to close mobile-rights deals with studios to change that.
Third-order effects
- If Nielsen keeps publishing device-level and content-type splits for online video, its measurement becomes the reference point studios and networks use to price streaming rights — turning viewing-habit reports into leverage in licensing negotiations.
The trend: Online video is stratifying by device and content type, with measurement firms like Nielsen increasingly arbitrating which services own which screens.