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Hulu Advertising on YouTube for Free

Hulu, the NBC / News Corp. YouTube competitor hasn’t been the train wreck many have expected. In fact, it’s a pretty darn good site with, you guessed it, loads of great content.

Interestingly enough Hulu has figured out how to advertise on YouTube for free. They’ve started a free account and uploaded many popular videos (like this one for example) that were pulled off YouTube in the past plus new clips from popular shows like Family Guy. Plus, they’ve added a scrolling ticker below the video that explains what Hulu is and how to use it.

The entire ticker reads (and repeats itself during the video):

Introducing Hulu.com, a premium video site. At Hulu.com, you can watch video like this one, for free. Hulu offers full episodes of current hit shows 30 Rock, House, Family Guy, The Office, to classic shows like Firefly, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and hundreds more TV episodes, movies and clips. Visit Hulu.com and start watching now. For Free.

This tactic seems to be working too. As of this writing, they’re in the Top 100 Most Viewed in the Directors category on YouTube and their traffic continues to grow.

Hulu: No Respect; Loads of Content

Big shock! The blogosphere hates the new name of the new NBC / News Corp. YouTube competitor, Hulu.

Why? Well apparently Hulu means “butt” in Malay and Indonesian and “cease” and “desist” in Swahili. OMG!111!11

You have no idea how many times my friends and I talk about funny videos we’ve seen in Swahili. As soon as Hulu launches these conversations are sure to get awkward.

But the bottom line is if Hulu comes out with a stable service that is easy to use people will start respecting them real quick. Here are a few simple reasons:

Saturday Night Live
Family Guy
The Simpsons
The Tonight Show
Late Night with Conan O'Brien
Heroes
30 Rock

People want to see clips of these shows. Look at these Family Guy clips. Or these clips from SNL. They have view counts in the millions. Content is king and Hulu will have TONS of it. It's never a good idea to dismiss a competitor with so many weapons in their arsenal.

Presidential Candidates Stealing Content on YouTube

The posting of copyrighted material has been a big problem for YouTube in the past. Now some of the highest profile users are posting illegal content: The presidential candidates!

Of the Democratic front runners Senators Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards only Obama has illegal content in this account – an interview with George Stephanopoulos on ABC.

The leading Republicans however are a different story. Of Gov. Mitt Romney, Sen. John McCain and Mayor Rudy Giuliani only Giuliani doesn’t have copyrighted materials.

While McCain has clips from the Today Show,  CNN and FOX News but Romney is the big offender.

Romney has content from all over including FOX News, 60 Minutes, CNN, MSNBC and even CBS’ Late Show with David Letterman.

So what will YouTube do? It's one thing to ban a teenager's account for posting Daily Show clips it is quite another to try to boss around a possible future President of the United States.

Don't Underestimate NBC and News Corp.

After failing to reach deals with Google-owned YouTube, NBC and News Corp (along with Microsoft, AOL and Yahoo!) are building their own video sharing site.

Many people are writing this off as a bunch of slow old media companies lumbering onto the internet in an effort to take on the King of Online Video. Of course they’re right. BUT it would be presumptuous to count them out based on that alone. Google seems to be doing that already by referring to this initiative as “Clown Co.”.

That’s a mistake. There are two key things NBC/News’ site must do to make an impact on YouTube – have exclusive content and provide a simple, easy user experience that works properly.

It’s no easy task but if they can make a site that makes it easy to share, embed and stream content they could make a significant mark in the online video arena.

Google Not Reaching Deals with Networks

paidContent, vis WSJ, is reporting that that Google / CBS deal is dead for now and gives details on Google / Viacom failing to reach agreements on money and technology issues.

My big concern is NBC, who sent Google a six-page letter demanding YouTube keep their content off their site. It doesn't bother me that NBC doesn't want to be on YouTube but rather they seem to have a 'we'll build it ourselves and everyone will come to us' approach rather than exploiting popular platforms that could help them now.

Of everyone in this scenario you'd think NBC, who's Saturday Night Live was a direct beneficiary of the "Lazy Sunday" viral sensation, would be more willing to jump on the digital bandwagon. By the way, "Lazy Sunday" isn't even on YouTube anymore. Nice work NBC.