Hulu brought in an all-star cast (including Seth Meyers, Mindy Kaling, and band Capital Cities) to ramp up excitement and laughs at its morning NewFront presentation at the Hammerstein Ballroom. Hosted by Saturday Night Live cast member (and Awesomes voice) Cecily Strong, the show was a tight, professional presentation spotlighting options for advertisers, Hulu-style. CEO Mike Hopkins revealed that Hulu Plus now has more than six million subscribers on more than 400 million devices, and users are spending 50 minutes on the service on desktops. In addition, SVP of Advertising Peter Naylor unveiled Hulu’s ad platforms: the In-stream Purchase Unit with Pizza Hut as its launch partner, Cross Platform Interactive ads with launch partner Corona Extra and the Hulu 360 ad, which recognizes a user’s device type to better target ads. “In the short term, we want to look at any areas of friction, and take a hard look at programmatic buying. We also want to give clients early looks at originals and at our ad innovations,” Naylor told Cynopsis. The Hulu advantage, he added, is that the service “has so much subscriber data that it makes it easier to connect the dots.”
Over the next year, Hulu will triple its content marketing spend to spread the word about the following original shows that have been renewed: Deadbeat, Seth Meyer’s animated series The Awesomes, Quick Draw and latino original series East Los High, which are all coming back for a second season. Mindy Kaling of The Mindy Project and Community’s Gillian Jacobs and Danny Pudi presented the exclusive release of their series on the platform. May 28th will mark the U.S. debut of teen dance drama The Next Step.
