Mark Cuban recently posted a commentary comparing Hulu and YouTube, coming to the conclusion that “Hulu is kicking YouTube’s Ass”. This has certainly stirred some commentary online including the response by Mark Hopkins over on Mashable where he argues that “when it comes to YouTube’s ass, Hulu couldn’t find it with both hands”.

I think both sides are right to some degree. YouTube certainly has ridiculously more traffic than Hulu, but Hulu has the monetization piece figured out much more effectively than YouTube. And I think both pieces are essential for building a successful media business: you need both distribution as well as monetization. And from a purely business perspective, it can be incredibly expensive to build distribution without monetization. I’m certain the bandwidth costs at YouTube are as ridiculous as their traffic.

This entry was posted on Friday, June 20th, 2008 at 2:13 pm and is tagged with Hulu, Video, YouTube. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.