I am not an avid YouTube fan, visiting the site every day to see which movies are being watched the most. I am not a big fan of “Hamster on a Piano” eating popcorn or otherwise. I have never really enjoyed stuff like that. It just doesn’t make sense to me. But, strangely enough, I do enjoy a good sitcom. While YouTube is the place for random homemade videos, you can only get extremely pixilated bits and pieces of your favorite shows.
That is where Hulu enters the race. They don’t have the diversity of viewing experiences that YouTube does, but the quality just might outshine the quantity.
I am sure many of you have seen the Hulu spot that first appeared during the Superbowl ( I tried to imbed the video, but apparently Hulu and WordPress aren’t friends yet).
I didn’t pay much attention to it, pretty much because it sounded too good to be true. Then today I stumbled on an article in Newsweek that made me think twice. Apparently Hulu is what it advertises to be. It is a brainchild of NBC Universal and News Corporation – two companies that I am not very familiar with but sound very powerful. Between the two of them they have the rights to a bunch of different TV shows and movies, old and new. By imbedding short commercials in the shows (30 seconds max) they have figured out how to turn a profit, where YouTube still struggles. As the article says, there are very few companies who want their name associated with a homemade movie about a poor abused hamster. But, those same companies would be happy to put up good money for an ad attached to the newest episode of the Emmy winning “30 Rock.”
Hulu also has a feature where you can say that you like or dislike an ad so that they can cater their offerings to you, the viewer. Also, you can choose to watch all the commercials at once before you watch your show, or they can be interspersed like normal TV commercials. It is pretty wild.
What does this have to do with book marketing? I am not sure. We could create an ebook version, where you could read a whole book for free with ads interspersed. I know no one wants to read a book on their computer, but “free” can be extremely enticing.
It was impossible for me to resist. I just spent the larger part of my day watching old episodes of “Doogie Howser, M.D.” Neil Patrick Harris has come a long way.
Quon's Viral Marketing for Ooligan Press 
I didn’t know anything about Hulu until I saw an ad about it on TV. Yes, I still think of advertising as a necessary evil, but now with more emphasis on necessary than on evil. (It didn’t hurt that the ad for Hulu starred Alec Baldwin.)