Hulu Politely Requests You Don’t Block Its Ads – But It’ll Let You Watch The Video, Anyway

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hulu.jpegAre you one of the small but vocal minority of Web users who hate advertising so much that you're willing to install programs to keep them out of sight?

Well, takes all kinds. But if you are one of those people... why are you watching Hulu, which is owned by two media conglomerates and wants to make money by selling ads? Here's Hulu's response to users who have installed the AdBlock plugin to Firefox. All things considered, we think the site is fairly polite about this -- we've heard talk of other Web publishers banning AdBlock users altogether.

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See Also:
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32 Comments

Jim Larrison (URL) said:
I actually am so thrilled with Hulu and the ABC Digital video library that I am more than happy to watch the ads. I actually go out of my way to watch the ads (many of them are much more interesting than on TV) because I love the service so much.

As someone that has spent $100's of dollars on tv downloads on iTunes, I am very happy to spend a few minutes to watch the ads and support the advertisers.

P&G has had great campaigns on the Turner video programs with their Crest brand. KY Jelly has done some really good campaigns on Hulu. Allstate ads on ABC Video Library have been the best ads I have seen in awhile.

I can't imagine going out of my way to block these advertisers, they are the reason I have so much access to such amazing content.

Given I NEVER watch TV on any of the 8 TV's we have in our house, I really love the internet long form programming. I am really excited for the new TheWB.com.

hehateme said:
JIM LARRISON: ARE YOU ON CRACK?

Steven (URL) said:
That's bizarre. I white listed hulu with Ad block and hulu shows a tiny little display advert. Adblock can't block inline video advertisements so hulu is willing to interfere with their video content experience to ensure that a small static display advert might get noticed? Interesting choice they've made. Maybe they'll be increasing their display advertising in the future.

clickbot said:
Hilarious!

You claim adblockers are a minority, but virtually *everyone* I know uses them. In fact, it's among the easiest software to install -- easier than filling out captcha's, or signing up for an account on a typical web site.

And if it's only a minority of users, why bother "banning" at all? These users are actually the most valuable to advertisers, and it's happening a lot more than advertisers are lead to think.

Unfortunately for you, there are a dozen blogs reporting exactly the same news you folks are. In fact, I think many of the commenters overlap.
So even if you could block us, it's like trying to charge for web-based email: good luck with that!

Oh, and @Larrison is either a tool, or works directly for the advertising industry (probably both :) )

palmer said:
I am and adblock user and use it selectively. I am happy to receive ads on the sites that I visit realizing that for most, if not all of them, they would not exist without the ads. Free is great, but, a visitor to a 'free' website is only as valuable as the ability to impress an ad on them. Without that ad impression they have zero value. I think IAB standard ads on a site I visit is a small sacrifice for access to the world.

palmer said:
Oh yeah, SAI, I do not block your ads and have actually clicked on a few. They are welcome on my session as they are often relevant to me.

For your advertisers - 42, M, HHI - $200+, Media, mid-atlantic region (not your natural born clicker)

Alex Moskalyuk (URL) said:
If you block ads on long video files, how would you know it's time to take a leak?

Doug said:
Ad blocking is here to stay. Tivo and other DVRs have grown to nearly 30 percent penetration, headed to 50 and then everyone. It's killing broadcast TV.

Ad blocking is killing the internet, too, and anyone who wonders why shuld go back and reread the last paragraph. People hate ads and most will not watch them.

My wife has even figured a way to effectively block ads in LIVE tv shows. She just watches an unwathced old show during the live commercial pod, rejoining the live show where she feels like it. She's 51, in case you attribute this practice to young people.

Doug said:
Ad blocking is here to stay. Tivo and other DVRs have grown to nearly 30 percent penetration, headed to 50 and then everyone. It's killing broadcast TV.

Ad blocking is killing the internet, too, and anyone who wonders why shuld go back and reread the last paragraph. People hate ads and most will not watch them.

My wife has even figured a way to effectively block ads in LIVE tv shows. She just watches an unwathced old show during the live commercial pod, rejoining the live show where she feels like it. She's 51, in case you attribute this practice to young people.

Kagan said:
I think Hulu should remove their response to adblock. The ads are 15 seconds and the request is 30 seconds. Of course I disable adblock to shorten time, but then I have to hear the damn advertisements. It's pointless to make those who don't want to watch the ads watch them because it holds no affect on them anyway. I bank through the credit union so I don't care about bank of america, I invest so I don't need to hear about charles schwab investment, and I don't give a damn about windex spray because I already use it. The advertisements are useless for me and the fact that I am forced to be stimulated by some bumbling idiots voice trying to sell me something makes me not want to buy their products and not watch tv. Leave my television viewing in peace. I want to relax and drone out when I watch it, not be frequently interrupted with a sales pitch. Since they've disable adblock on hulu I've probably used hulu twice because I would rather go somewhere else and watch it. See ya hulu.

Bob said:
Ads are annoying in many cases (in others, like in the Superbowl, they are ok (plus, acceptable since you have to wait for timeouts anyway)), and I find the frequency of them and irrelevance of them are perhaps the biggest factors in my annoyance level (especially towards the end of a movie being shown on TV, for example).

For those who like the capability to skip ads the way they can now (I don't have a DVR), I would think they should hope DVR penetration (or penetration of ad blocking software) does not get to the 50% or more point, since once it reaches those levels you may see content producers being forced to charge for content, at which point then piracy would become the biggest problem (like music industry).

The other result of too much ad skipping / piracy (even under 50%) probably just means content producers will put out much more low-budget reality or user-generated stuff and less studio stuff (which by the looks of what people want to watch these days will probably be fine with everyone).

I can see a future where TV with ads only exists for live events (news, sports) with all other content just being a pay / subscription model with no ads. That actually sounds pretty good to me.

SuezanneC Baskerville (URL) said:
I have two monitors. On one monitor I watched a film on Hulu running in Opera. No ad blocking in effect. On the other monitor I'm running Firefox with no adblockers running.

Hulu repeatedly showed the adblock software.

There are other browsers with adblocking software installed on the machine but not in use.

No Hulu ads were being blocked, but I had to see the warning anyway.

That was my first time watching a movie on Hulu. I think it will be my last.

M. James said:
I run ad block on Firefox 3, in ubuntu. I use to see these 30 sec warnings, but now I actually see the ads. I dislike the repeated use of the same ad in a tv show. example: I watched heroes and the same nissan ad ran every time, on every episode. So I do what I already do with live tv, I hit the mute button, and wait until the show comes back on, that way I'm not entirely distracted by the plot.

Jonny Blaze said:
I hit the mute button everytime the ads come on! If you think about it, it's kind of like a game, just the whole anticipation for another advertisement to come on and press the mute button is awesome.

Thanks a million advertisers!

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Blowkowski said:
No Doug, ads are killing the internet. I would be so happy if all these commercial ventures would disappear from the internet, and take their Flash-y pollution with them. Keep the internet free!

lucetta (URL) said:
640-802 Hulu Politely Requests You Don’t Block Its Ads – But It’ll Let You Watch The Video, Anyway At least everyone's all right. Up to you. You're the Boss. Anything you say.


rowan (URL) said:
Give me a discount. I'll pretend I didn't see that. 640-802 / NS0-201 / 642-552 / MB2-632 / 640-863



Gary V said:
There are two things I do so the ads won't interfere with my hulu experience. the 1st thing i'll usually is mute the program and fast forward to right before each ad, then i'll go back and watch the show, since at least on my computer they only show the ads once for each run through. the 2nd thing i'll do is if i'm gonna be watching more than one show on hulu in one sitting. I'll open one show in a new tab, mute it. then go and open another show in a different tab and watch that episode. When the episode i'm done watching is over I'll go to the other tab and and watch the 1st episode i opened in a new tab, that way there aren't any ads at all. Sometimes i open 4 or 5 shows in new tabs if i'm gonna do some serious tv watching, cuz i've got plenty of bandwidth.

Seth (URL) said:
*
In the adblocking arms race the interweb community ALWAYS wins: collective intelligence

The heart wants what the heart wants.. and it doesn't want to see ads or pay for content.

If seeing ads generated a monthly voucher to pay my ISP I might reconsider




*

Seth (URL) said:
The original promise of cable programming was ZERO ads.

And that's what I get.


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