Hulu enjoys video advertising boost

Hulu served more than a billion video ads in October, a significant jump from the 794 million it served in September, according to new figures from comScore.

In terms of ad impressions, Google comes a fair way behind Hulu (in tenth place on comScore’s list) despite being the most viewed site when it comes to watching online video content.  Overall, US users spent an average of 271.6 minutes viewing video on Google sites (including YouTube) over the course of the month.

By comparison, viewers spent 207.8 minutes on Hulu in October.

The rise in online video ad spend has provided a substantial boost to Hulu’s balance. Earlier this month, the VoD service announced a revenue increase from $108 million in 2009 to $240 million in 2010.

eMarketer forecasts that video ad spending on the site will increase by nearly 50% from $1.5 billion between 2009 and 2010.

Hulu passes the vast majority of any revenue onto the networks that provide content, leaving the company with around 20% to 30%. However, this still equates to a minimum of $48 million in revenue for Hulu itself.