Hulu Reports $420M in 2011 From Ads and Subscriptions

Hulu’s revenue totaled $420 million in 2011, a year-over-year increase of 60 percent, the online video service reported on its blog today. That sum represents a staggering 4X growth since 2009, according to privately owned Hulu, which also stated it has 1,000 brand advertisers in the fold.

“We are relentless in our mission to be the most effective video advertising service on the planet,” wrote Hulu CEO Jason Kilar in the blog post.

In 2011, Kilar’s firm picked up around 1.2 million subscribers to Hulu Plus to bring the subscription business to more than 1.5 million total users. Hulu Plus costs $7.95 a month, or close to $100 a year.

Los Angeles-based Hulu didn’t specify how much revenue came from advertising versus subscriptions. If Hulu got 100,000 new subscribers each month to reach the total of 1.5 million by year’s end, Hulu would have generated about $90 million in subscription revenue in 2011.

When asked to break down the revenue figures, a Hulu rep responded in an email to ClickZ News: “The revenues are a blend of advertising and subscription. Subscription is both U.S. and Japan. Please understand that our U.S. subscription service, Hulu Plus, is also ad-supported. It is a dual revenue stream business (ads and subscription revenues) that enables us to compensate content owners much more than anyone else in the online subscription market on a per subscriber basis.”

According to Kilar’s post, the 18-month-old Hulu Plus is picking up two times the daily subscribers as it was a year ago. He wrote that his firm expects subscriptions “to account for more than half of Hulu’s overall business later this year.”

At the same time, Kilar’s company fell short of his own prediction from April 2011, when he said Hulu would get to $500 million in revenue by year’s end.