Providing market intelligence for more than 35 years

In The News

Hulu Adds (Mostly) Ad-Free Subscription Service

Hulu CEO Mike Hopkins chalked up the exceptions to rights held by studios on select series. “They have other commitments that they couldn’t free them up for a complete commercial-free offering,” he said, adding that the service will clearly delineate the exceptions to users before they stream those series.

Other series that will have pre-roll include four ABC series: “How to Get Away with Murder,” “Grey’s Anatomy,” “Once Upon a Time,” “Agents of SHIELD,” and an NBC series, “Grimm.”

Hulu is making the move in response to subscriber complaints voiced in various forms of consumer research about having to pay yet still watch ads. Earlier this month, a Parks Associates survey found that half of Hulu subscribers have canceled service over the past 12 months, compared to just 9% for Netflix over the same span.

The new subscription option brings Hulu in line with its commercial-free rivals Netflix, which remains several dollars cheaper than Hulu depending on which rate its own subscribers pay, and Amazon Prime, which charges $99 per year for access to its content library in addition to free two-day shipping.

From the article "Hulu Adds (Mostly) Ad-Free Subscription Service" by Andrew Wallenstein. 

Previously In The News

Does ‘Move-In Ready’ Now Mean Smart-Home Technology?

The study, conducted by Parks Associates on behalf of Coldwell Banker in early June, gathered opinions from 1,250 adults, 801 of whom own at least one smart home product. While survey respondents spec...

Securing Smart Homes From Hackers

Parks Associates have predicted more than 50 million connected homes by 2020. With that being the scale of device connections, it is high time for developers to prioritise protecting customer data....

Next Gen Connected Devices Take Off & Consumer Love Them

Currently voice control is attracting much of the smart-home spotlight but it is products will also increasingly rely on video and data analytics, sound recognition and artificial intelligence to simp...

Here's The Top Ten Most Popular Streaming Services This Year

"Importantly, all of these services have increased their subscriber base over the past year. The top five OTT services have stayed consistent, primarily through maintaining or growing the massive user...