Hulu to charge advertisers for complete ad views

Hulu is preparing to change the way it charges advertisers. The online video site, which runs more video ads to consumers than any other website or service in the US, will soon charge advertisers for complete views.

“We aren’t going to charge more for this,” said Hulu senior VP-sales JP Colaco. “If you pay for a full impression, you will get an impression, full stop.”

Hulu ran more than 1.5 billion video ads to viewers in February, compared with Google’s 1.2 billion. However, Hulu has a huge lead over Google in total time – 650 million minutes to 119 million, according to comScore.

Hulu does not allow users to skip pre-roll ads and because it is primarily long-form TV, with more TV-like ad breaks, it is thought that viewers are more likely to watch ads through to the end. Viewers who opt out of the ads also opt out of the rest of the show they are watching. Hulu does however offer the ability to swap an ad or choose one of three ads at the outset of a show.

The company claims its completion rate for ads is 96%. Read the full Ad Age article here.