Skip to main content

Hulu announces a new ad unit that appears when you pause

Just to get this out of the way: Yes, Hulu is introducing an ad unit that will show up when you pause a video. But no, the ad won’t be a video.

Hulu says it has 25 million subscribers, the majority of them on an ad-supported plan — so they’re used to seeing TV-style commercial breaks before and during their viewing experience. However, Vice President and Head of Advertising Platforms Jeremy Helfand said the company realizes that playing a similar ad as soon as you hit pause would be bad for both viewers and advertisers.

For the viewer, “It can be jarring — you think you’ve paused the content, but you’re still seeing sight, sound and motion,” Helfand said. As for the advertiser, they don’t want to create a 30-second ad that the viewer doesn’t see because they’ve left for the kitchen or the bathroom, or because they unpause the show five seconds into the ad.

Conversely, he said that during testing, Hulu found that viewers accepted the format “if the ad is subtle and relevant.”

Hulu Pause Ad Charmin

The Hulu Pause Ad is more like a translucent banner — or, as Helfand put it, “a car billboard on the side of the road” — that appears on the right side of the screen. This makes for a better viewing experience, since it’s less distracting than a video and you can still see your TV show underneath. And Helfand argued that it’s also better for the brand, because it allows them to get their message across in a quick and simple way.

Also, Pause Ads won’t appear until several seconds after you pause. That’s in case you’ve paused so that you can rewind or otherwise adjust the video, which isn’t really an ideal time to show an ad. If you start fiddling with the controls, the Pause Ad either won’t appear at all, or if it’s already on-screen, it will immediately disappear. Similarly, it should disappear as soon as you hit play again.

When asked if this might give advertisers another ad placement issue to worry about — say, if their brand shows up next to a risqué sex scene or a gory death scene — Helfand noted that Pause Ads won’t be appearing on episodes that have been rated TV-MA, and that Hulu allows advertisers to target or “anti-target” (explicitly avoid) based on genre. It also sounds like these capabilities will be further refined.

Hulu plans to launch the first Pause Ads in the second quarter of this year, and it’s already announcing two advertisers — Coca-Cola and Charmin. The ads will appear in select on-demand content in the Hulu library.

Helfand said the exact size and placement of the unit could continue evolving over time. In addition, Hulu is still figuring out the exact pricing model, but it’s envisioned as part of a larger package for advertisers.

And while it’s understandable for viewers to get annoyed when they see ads in new places, Helfand suggested that this is part of a broader push towards “non-disruptive formats,” where the ads don’t stop the video and interrupt your viewing experience. In fact, the goal is for these new formats to account for 50 percent of Hulu’s ad revenue within the next three years.

“The whole conversation that we’ve had in this market, should a commercial break be 10 or 15 seconds — it’s all disruptive,” Helfand said. Instead, he argued that the better question is, “How do you help provide the very best storytelling experience for viewers in an ad-supported service?”



from TechCrunch https://tcrn.ch/2TkDNgp
via IFTTT

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Max Q: Psyche(d)

In this issue: SpaceX launches NASA asteroid mission, news from Relativity Space and more. © 2023 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/h6Kjrde via IFTTT

Max Q: Anomalous

Hello and welcome back to Max Q! Last week wasn’t the most successful for spaceflight missions. We’ll get into that a bit more below. In this issue: First up, a botched launch from Virgin Orbit… …followed by one from ABL Space Systems News from Rocket Lab, World View and more Virgin Orbit’s botched launch highlights shaky financial future After Virgin Orbit’s launch failure last Monday, during which the mission experienced an  “anomaly” that prevented the rocket from reaching orbit, I went back over the company’s financials — and things aren’t looking good. For Virgin Orbit, this year has likely been completely turned on its head. The company was aiming for three launches this year, but everything will remain grounded until the cause of the anomaly has been identified and resolved. It’s unclear how long that will take, but likely at least three months. Add this delay to Virgin’s dwindling cash reserves and you have a foundation that’s suddenly much shakier than before. ...

What’s Stripe’s deal?

Welcome to  The Interchange ! If you received this in your inbox, thank you for signing up and your vote of confidence. If you’re reading this as a post on our site, sign up  here  so you can receive it directly in the future. Every week, I’ll take a look at the hottest fintech news of the previous week. This will include everything from funding rounds to trends to an analysis of a particular space to hot takes on a particular company or phenomenon. There’s a lot of fintech news out there and it’s my job to stay on top of it — and make sense of it — so you can stay in the know. —  Mary Ann Stripe eyes exit, reportedly tried raising at a lower valuation The big news in fintech this week revolved around payments giant Stripe . On January 26, my Equity Podcast co-host and overall amazingly talented reporter Natasha Mascarenhas and I teamed up to write about how Stripe had set a 12-month deadline for itself to go public, either through a direct listing or by pursuin...