A large number of Hulu customers are willing to pay $4 more per month to banish advertisements from the streaming service’s growing catalog of content.
Hulu, a partnership between Fox, Comcast-NBC, Disney, and Time Warner, Inc., has more than 20 million paid subscribers, and around 40 percent pay $11.99 for the ad-free version of the service. Fox CEO James Murdoch told Recode he believed the ad-avoiding crowd had grown to represent 50% of Hulu’s subscriber base, but insiders later corrected Murdoch, claiming more than 60% still pay $7.99 a month for the ad-supported tier.
Hulu says its customers are getting ad loads “less than half that of traditional television” on its $7.99 plan, according to CEO Randy Freer.
More mysterious — how many customers are willing to pay $40 a month for Hulu’s Live TV service. Hulu isn’t saying.
Fierce Cable notes CBS All Access has also had success getting subscribers to pay $9.99 a month for an ad-free experience — $4 more than its standard $5.99 subscription price. CBS claims about one-third of its 2.5 million customers choose ad-free viewing.
CBS has been criticized for loading considerably more advertising content into shows than its rivals, which may have irritated enough customers to upgrade.
Joe Ianniello, chief operating officer at CBS, said the more subscribers are willing to pay for CBS All Access, the more leverage CBS gets forcing cable and satellite providers to pay more for the right to carry CBS affiliated television stations on their lineups.
“When the consumer is making the choice to pay $10 a month, that speaks volumes and that gives us a lot of strength when we go into those negotiations because we know that the consumer has knowingly elected to pay that. They’re not being subsidized by advertising, or subsidized in big bundle cable package; they chose to do that so that gives us a lot of confidence when we head into those revenue negotiations,” Ianniello said during CBS’ most recent earnings call.
Comcast is overloaded with ads at this point. Funny, because for $200 / month, I thought I paid for “ad-free content”. This used to be the main attraction for cable TV years ago. And as far as CBS having “leverage” because they have a lot of ads? I’d like to compare ad pricing of CBS versus competitors. Cheap ads sell more. Cheap ads for low quality networks. I wouldn’t know because I haven’t tuned in to CBS in years.