It looks as though Hulu is on the slide, as the Disney, NBC, and News Corp. co-owned service is reportedly losing viewers at an alarming rate. This could explain why the partners were so keen to sell the company last year.

Hulu Losing Viewers

According to Wedbush Securities using comScore data, Hulu viewership has dropped sharply during the course of 2012. In March users watched 156 hours of content through the website, but by August that had dropped to 56 million hours. As a result Hulu’s market penetration has dropped from 3.9 percent to just 1.5 percent.

This is bad news for Hulu, and it looks as though Providence Equity Partners may have chosen the right moment to sell its stake. The questions over the decline have to be why is it happening, and why now?

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Tablets are growing in popularity, and with good reason. The Apple iPad is king right now, but Amazon is ready to unleash its first tablet on the world. And it could compete, partly thanks to online video.

Video On Tablets

People lucky enough to own a tablet computer are likely to enjoy a higher level of engagement with online video than their poor notebook- or desktop-owning cousins. At least according to Ooyala, which provides a range of video services to brands and businesses.

For each minute of video content watched on a desktop, 1 minute, 17 seconds will be watched on a tablet. Which represents a 28 percent advantage. Tablet owners are also more than twice as likely to watch a video to the end, and a third more likely than people watching on mobile devices.

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In the U.S., and probably elsewhere in the world in the territories where gaming is popular, games consoles are the primary platform for viewing online video content on a television set. Who needs games when you have a world of digital content at your fingertips?

A Prediction Proved

If you watch online video on your TV then the chances are you do so using a games console. At least according to new data from a market research firm. Which really should come as no surprise as it was a trend we foresaw happening way back in February 2009.

It was then I wrote an article primarily about more content coming to the Xbox 360 but also suggesting that games consoles were becoming “important drivers of online video” and helping make the sector “mainstream and accessible to all.” Both predictions have been proven correct in the two years since that article appeared here on WebTVWire.

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Hulu is going from strength-to-strength, with a new milestone in Hulu Plus subscriber numbers and a healthy revenue forecast for the year. Kind of makes you wonder why the company is up for sale, doesn’t it?

Hulu Plus Growth Plus

I wasn’t keen on Hulu Plus when it launched. I’m still not if I’m perfectly honest. It just doesn’t offer enough to warrant dipping your hand in your pocket. Except 1 million people disagree with me and are now subscribing to the paid portion of Hulu.

According to a Hulu Blog post, June 2011 was the best month for adding Hulu Plus subscribers, and the total of 875,000, when combined with those currently signed up for a free trial, means the 1 million milestone has been reached.

Not only that but Hulu CEO Jason Kilar claims the company is on course to make $500 million in revenue in 2011, or half a billion as he puts it. Which prompts just one question in my mind…

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Smart TV sets sold well in 2010, with figures higher than previously estimated. And that trend looks set to continue right on up until 2015. The problem is no one has taken firm control of the interface and content, meaning the whole thing is currently a messed-up mish-mash.

Smart TV Sales

Two new reports from research firms show how popular smart television sets already are, and how sales are going to grow exponentially over the next five years.

DisplaySearch reports that a fifth of all television sets sold in 2010 were capable of connecting to the Internet and this this is helping germinate “a quiet revolution in TV viewing.”

Parks Associates, meanwhile, predicts that around 350 million Web-enabled devices, including smart TVs, Blu-ray players, and games consoles will have sold worldwide by 2015.

As people replace their television sets, they obviously gain the latest technology. But unlike 3D, which is being foisted upon us without any great demand, Web-enabled sets are actually wanted, with many people realizing how they could add another option to their TV viewing habits.

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Online video is a huge presence on the Web now, so much so that it’s easy to lose sight of the changing trends occurring in the sector. Thankfully, TubeMogul is on hand to deliver research based on how people are consuming online video. And some of it is intriguing.

Google, Then Facebook?

It’s no surprise to learn that Google is top, by quite a margin, in terms of traffic referrals to video destinations included in the study. More than 50 percent of all come from Google, and that doesn’t even include YouTube, which TubeMogul hasn’t included in this research.

However, what’s more surprising is the fact that second on the list is Facebook, with 9.6 percent of all referrals coming directly from the social networking site. Facebook has leaped ahead of Yahoo!, the previous runner-up, in the last quarter.

Facebook has done amazingly well, and its ability to compete and beat the likes of Yahoo and Bing shows how social search is becoming very important. However, Google by itself beats everyone else combined.

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Cord cutting is a real phenomenon, is already happening, and is only going to happen in greater numbers in the years to come. The sooner cable companies realize their monopoly is coming to an end thanks to online video, the better it’ll be for all concerned.

Cable Cord Cutting

Millions of Americans pay out thousands of dollars every years for cable services, both basic and premium. For this huge outlay of cash they receive up to 500 channels, most of which are full of crap that very few people deem worthy of watching.

The cable companies have a monopoly of sorts: you only get to watch the channels that broadcast decent programming if you also put up with, and pay for, the channels that pump out unwatchable nonsense 24/7.

There is, however, an alternative. Which is online video on demand, which puts the control back in the viewers hands. And all it takes is for that cord to be cut.

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