Los Angeles (CA) – Outspoken YouTube critic and billionaire Mark Cuban has announced in a recent blog post that “Hulu is kicking Youtube’s Ass” and he predicts Hulu’s total revenues will surpass YouTube's by next year.  The secret to Hulu’s success, according to Cuban, is its ability to monetize 100% of its content and that it can piggyback on YouTube by posting small clips of full shows for free.

Cuban calls this piggyback technique “The YouTube Arbitrage”.  Hulu posts clips on YouTube and these clips link back to Hulu’s full-length tv episodes, movies and other shows.  Since Hulu isn’t charged for these postings, the company effectively leverages YouTube’s bandwidth in its favor.  In essence, Hulu can grow itself while effectively trying to bankrupt Youtube.  “We pay you nothing, and you send us traffic that generates ad revenue for us,” said Cuban.

Another advantage in Hulu’s favor is that it can insert ads into every video because the company knows exactly what content it has.  Cuban argues that YouTube probably doesn’t know what 99% of its content is and adds that YouTube only has licensing deals with a very small percentage of its videos.

“There is no doubt that Hulu, if it doesn't already, will have more monetizable traffic and greater revenues than Youtube going forward,” said Cuban.

Hulu.com is a joint venture between NBC Universal and News Corp.  It has high-quality videos of full television episodes, movies and sports clips.  Recently it added full episodes of The Daily Show and games from the NBA Playoffs and Finals.

You can read Mark Cuban’s blog post here

congrats?

Jun 18, 2008 14:15     

hulu will never see the amount of traffic youtube gets. monetary yes but never full on hits. if hulu wants that they better start putting more episodes of successful shows and stop filling it with filler crap. the only good thing about hulu is that it saved me $20 from buying arrested development on dvd. watched season 3 on there.
jonas report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +2

But can Hula...

Jun 18, 2008 14:36     

possibly effect the outcome of an election? display the abuses of the government? let anyone share their own videos? rickroll anyone?
Tyler report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +7

Hulu=load of BS

Jun 18, 2008 16:15     

Mark Cuban is some stupid man. How in hell can hulu kick ass of youtube if hulu doesn't support lots of country.
Vito report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +6

Bad comparison

Jun 19, 2008 10:02     

It's a bad comparison. YouTube is for Joe Blow to upload .. whatever .. for people to watch. Communal video sharing. Hulu is a site for network to post their television shows, etc for people to watch. Just because they both deal with video as a whole doesn't mean they can be directly compared and are competing items.
JT report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +2

winning the money game is the only thing that matters

Jun 19, 2008 11:15     

youtube loses money. Enough said.
therooster report abuse vote down vote up Votes: -1

re: winning the money game is the ....

Jun 27, 2008 12:53     

Well, technically youtube is Google..... and I'm not sure if they've ever posted a loss.
liquefire report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +0