Hulu’s 2012: Revenue up 65% to $695M, subscribers double to 3M, 28% more advertisers

Hulu had a bang-up 2012, and they’ve rounded it up in a blog post today. We combed through the figures and found the most eyebrow-raising statistics. Revenue for the streaming site was up 65% in 2012, and it doubled its subscribers from April to December, ending up at 3 million for the year.

Some of the other numbers for Hulu’s 2012 that stand out:

• Revenue of $695 million, an increase of 65%
• Subscribers were up 50% from 2M in April to 3 million in December and doubled from Q4 of 2011
• Hulu now available from 320 million devices in the US not including laptops and desktops
• Hulu and Hulu Plus titles grew by over 40%
• Hulu now has 60,000 TV episodes, 2,300 series and 50,000 hours of video
• Spent $500 million on content
• Generated $1 billion for content partners
• Launched 25 Hulu Exclusive and ‘original’ series shows
• Served over 1,000 different advertisers, up 28% from 2011

Hulu Japan also had a great year, with a lot of expansion in content and subscribers:

• Hulu Japan’s content offerings quadrupled over the last year
• More than 50 million connected devices (not desktops or laptops)
• 40 million Android mobile phones and tablets
• 3x volume of paying subscribers from 2011

Hulu has been showing some very good growth for a service that is still unavailable in most of the world. Among my overseas compatriots, it’s still the number one reason for Internet tunneling via proxy or VPN in order to bypass its region restrictions. Those restrictions, largely due to content licensing deals, are arguably Hulu’s biggest roadblock to continuing its explosive growth.

As part of the overall trend of streaming services launching their own original content, Hulu has been a model citizen. I actually watch the stuff that’s coming out of their program, like the very funny Spy, and it has provided another great avenue for small productions with minor budgets to get their content out there.

Presuming that Hulu can continue its current rate of subscriber growth, we should expect the site to reach 4 million subscribers in late summer, 2013. However, a holiday uptick could move that line up several notches. For now, Hulu appears to be doing well for itself.