Hulu continues to keep up with the times.  When it first launched 11 years ago, it was 100% desktop delivered.  Now, according to Peter Naylor, Hulu’s Senior Vice President of Ad Sales, the company is 6% desktop, 80% living room and 100% subscriber driven.  “It’s all about choice and control,” he explained at the recent VideoNuze conference.  With three different types of subscription services -- depending on if a customer wants ad-free viewing or not, along with the multi-member access option -- Naylor (pictured above right) calculated that 82 million people watch Hulu per month -- with 70% opting for the ad-supported version of the service.

Streaming services have expanded the consumer experience in such a way that viewers now expect to watch whatever they want, whenever they want -- and yet, the ability to make choices rarely extends to the advertising.  That's an area where Hulu differentiated itself when it launched and it remains true today.  Hulu is the only major streaming service that allows viewers to pay less for an ad-supported service.  Its latest innovation could even reinvent the snack or bathroom break -- or at least the bingeing breather -- with pause advertising.  Jeremy Helfand, Hulu's Vice President and Head of Advertising Platforms, spoke with MediaVillage about what viewer-first advertising means.

Hulu’s crime drama The Act gives new meaning to the phrase, “You can’t make this stuff up.”  Based on true events, this seasonal anthology follows mother-daughter duo Dee Dee (Patricia Arquette) and Gypsy Rose Blanchard (Joey King) on a journey that’s chock-full of lies, secrets and eventual murder.  Created by writer/producer Nick Antosca and Michelle Dean, this dramatization brings viewers a story that feels too over the top to be real, but definitely is.  The fact that it is so damn good and detailed makes sense, as Michelle Dean is the journalist who produced the definitive documentary about the Blanchards, Mommy Dead and Dearest, which more or less makes her the authority on this topic.