Hulu phases out its own free streaming service, inks deal with Yahoo to provide TV episodes to Yahoo View, Yahoo's new ad-supported TV streaming site
Hulu inks deal with Yahoo to provide free, ad-supported episodes of TV shows — Hulu is moving to an all-subscription model …
Context & Ripple Effects
The move caps a year of tier experimentation at Hulu: it first pushed its ad-supported catalog onto third-party free platforms with the Pluto TV distribution deal in July 2015, then added a $12 commercial-free subscription option that September. Killing the free service outright completes that arc — Hulu keeps only paying subscribers on its own property and outsources the free, ad-supported experience to Yahoo View.
The bet looks prescient in hindsight: by 2019, 70% of Hulu's 82M viewers were on the $5.99 ad-supported plan, generating $1.5B in annual ad revenue — evidence that converting free viewers into cheap subscribers was the right monetization path.
First-order effects
- Hulu's existing free viewers face a hard choice — subscribe or migrate to Yahoo View, which inherits the free, ad-supported episode library under the new licensing deal.
- Yahoo gains a turnkey content supply for its newly launched ad-supported TV site without licensing shows show-by-show, while Hulu sheds the bandwidth and rights costs of serving non-paying users.
Second-order effects
- Yahoo View enters direct competition with Pluto TV, which already presents Hulu's ad-supported content in a TV-grid format — two free platforms now built substantially on the same supplier's catalog.
- Hulu's ad inventory consolidates inside its own subscription tiers, making the ad-supported plan's pricing (later cut to $5.99 after Netflix's hikes) the sole funnel for ad dollars.
Third-order effects
- The structure that emerges — subscription-only owned platforms plus licensed back-catalogs feeding third-party ad-supported services — becomes a template for how TV networks monetize both audiences rather than choosing between them.
- If the pattern holds, free streaming consolidates around a few aggregator platforms (Yahoo View, Pluto TV) supplied by content owners who no longer run their own free destinations.
The trend: Streaming TV is splitting into paid subscription hubs and licensed-content ad-supported aggregators, with owners like Hulu exiting free hosting to rent their catalogs into the AVOD layer instead.