Inspiration from Hulu: Money Well Spent on Advertising

Am inspired by an article I read in Fast Company this morning regarding Hulu.com, the main representative of what is considered "Web TV" today.

Lessons that can be learned from their strategies to give more value to companies advertising on their site:

1. Let viewers control part of the ad experience: Viewers can choose which commercials to watch--from BlackBerry to Fancy Feast cat food. Even better for viewers, they can choose between one glob of ads before a movie or several segments that are shorter.

2. Viewers can vote with a thumbs-up or thumbs-down on each ad. THIS IS THE GENIUS PART. Viewers get satisfaction of providing feedback and lets Hulu customize their ads from that feedback. Moreover, as we can all argue about advertising, how to gauge it, etc.--we do all know that it works. With viewer feedback, advertisers can truly know if they are going in the right direction with their ad campaign or not. Businesses value ANY kind of feedback (hence the popularity of Twitter), even the bad so they can change course and stop wasting money on something that doesn't entice viewers.

3. Users of Hulu supply demographic information--all of this enables advertisers to achieve far more precise targeting than our regular 'ole TV provides. I must include my friends that love Hulu as a lot of them are in the creative industry and use Hulu to pass time while huge files are uploading, etc. "I have a big belief that if you don't have children under the age of 2, you don't need to see a Pampers commercial," Kilar of Hulu says. "That's not money well spent for an advertiser."

4. Example: In launching their new search engine Bing, Microsoft ran a "Bing-a-thon" which in a nutshell was a 72-minute telethon parody that was truly funny and featured actors from SNL. Every Hulu ad that day was a Bing-a-thon clip, and the infomercial was the day's 4th most watched program. An ad being a top program? Get out! THE GENIUS OF THIS: Viewers could do a Bing search within the Hulu screen and tell friends about it. There is no other platform within TV that allows you to do that right now. And, viewers tuned in for approximately 30 minutes--the equivalent of nearly 60 30-second spots.

While Hulu needs to grow it's advertising dollars to make money, as they offer a free service, I think they are on the right track. Anything from here can only be better. They are truly tuned in and I admire their strategy.

We can all learn from this, and apply it to our own advertising dollars spent.