By By Tim Soutphommasane, Technology WriterPosted March 09, 2018 07:02:09Google, Facebook, and Hulu are all about the same thing: selling ads on their websites and apps.
And they all need advertising to do that.
Hulu’s ad products include its own video ad service, ad inventory, and ad recommendations.
But now Hulu is getting in on the action, announcing plans to sell its testifiers and testimonials on a wide range of advertising platforms.
Hudson Mohr, CEO of Hulu, announced the change during an earnings call on Thursday.
“This is an important step to build our customer base for future ad sales, as we continue to leverage our ad inventory and ad recommendation capabilities to drive more revenue for the company,” he said.
Hulmes ad inventory is still a work in progress.
“As we roll out our ad platform and service in the next few weeks, we will continue to make significant improvements to our ad offering in order to optimize our inventory and improve our monetization strategy,” Mohr said.
That means the company won’t be selling ads to the major ad networks that dominate its marketplace.
Hulu has been working with major networks, including Google, Yahoo, AOL, and Microsoft, to build out its ad inventory.
But while Google and Yahoo will likely be the major advertisers on Hulu’s test platforms, Hulu isn’t taking a direct cut of those ad revenue.
The company plans to use its test brokers and the platform’s ads as a way to make more money on those ads.
“Our ad platform offers our advertisers a variety of monetization options, including the ability to advertise on their own websites and other platforms,” Mohre said.
“We’re also adding testifiers to our inventory to make our ads more relevant to our audience and increase the value of our advertising to our advertisers.”
As part of the deal, Hulu will also be working with the major advertising networks to make the testifiers available for free to users who sign up for Hulu’s premium service.
“With the launch of our premium service, our advertisers will be able to see their ads as well as test the ads on the site in the same way that they do on the free platform,” Mohrer said.
As part, Hulu is giving the advertisers a two-year window to opt out of the advertising on the platform.
The two-way opt-out period will last for 60 days.
Once that window ends, Hulu’s advertisers will still be able access their ads on Hulu, but Hulu’s paid offerings will stop showing.
That’s good news for Hulu, which has been looking to improve its advertising sales in recent months.
Hulu is currently the third-most popular paid ad platform in the United States behind Amazon and YouTube.
Hulu also has a big ad inventory of more than 400,000 ads.