• by Karlene Lukovitz  @KLmarketdaily, March 25, 2021

Disney’s Hulu SVOD drew 873 ads in the first two months of this year, including 461 in January and 548 in February, according to tracking/analysis by MediaRadar.

Fifty-eight percent (270) of the brands running in January continued their placements in February.

Ad spend on Hulu tends to be concentrated in specific categories. Media and entertainment accounted for 35% of all spots in February (excluding house ads for properties owned by Hulu parent Disney), and technology and retail accounted for 17% and 9%, respectively.

Still, February’s top 10 were fairly diverse: DraftKings, Samsung, Mercari Mobile App, Verizon, Kia, Taco Bell, T-Mobile, TurboTax, Hello Fresh and Geico.

Samsung and Mercari were new to Hulu in February. Other notable new advertisers in the month included General Motors, SquareSpace, Pepsi, Cricket Wireless, Lunchables (Kraft), Google Pixel, Facebook, Target and Cerveza Pacifico.

Content partners such as NBC, Fox and ABC typically have the right to sell some portion of the ad inventory within their shows, but Hulu original programming is sold exclusively by Hulu. 

There were 90 advertisers within publishers’ shows in February.

Brands buying the most inventory within Hulu original programming year-to-date include Hello Fresh, DraftKings, Match.com, Pantene Pro-V, Lunchables, Marshalls, TJ Maxx, General Motors, Verizon Wireless and WW (Weight Watchers).

In January, 20% of total spots were house ads — marketing for Disney-owned properties’ programming, including ESPN and ABC. In February, house ads declined to 13%, perhaps indicating more paid third-party ads.

Hulu stopped taking advertising from Netflix in October 2019, but has continued to take ads from other competitors.

In the first two months of this year, all of the larger streaming services, including Paramount+, ran small campaigns on Hulu.

Ads for Peacock and Tubi ran exclusively in programming from their respective owners, NBCU and Fox.

Ads for Amazon Prime Video ran exclusively in ABC programming, and ads for Discovery+ ran exclusively in Fox programming.

Hulu actively markets programs on Disney-owned channels, including FX, Fox, Freeform, ABC and ESPN, but does almost no marketing for Disney+ or ESPN+. It does run “scarce” promotions for the Disney Bundle, which includes Hulu, as well as Disney+ and ESPN+.

Since January, MediaRadar has had a panel of more than 2 million men and women in age groups 18 to 34 and 35 to 49 tracking ads on Hulu’s $5.99-per-month service tier. That tier represents about 70% of subscribers, per Hulu.

The tracking does not include the Hulu+ Live TV virtual MVPD app.