The countdown to Hulu.com’s public launch is now in hours instead of days and the company is throwing in a few treats to spark interest. A newly announced partnership with Warner Bros brings in a whole new library of content, and deals with some sports channels may attract another segment of viewers. Will it attract enough users for Hulu.com to survive?

On its front page, Hulu.com promises public access to the site starting tomorrow.

In October of 2007, Hulu began inviting users to participate in its private beta. Since then, it’s attracted over 5 million people who view 80% of Hulu’s entire library of content every week, according to Reuters.

For syndicated content, that has huge implications as people look to relive old episodes or share them with friends.

Hulu has a rough road ahead, and this public launch is a one way to attract more users while positioning itself to become the de facto standard in distributing professional video online.

Why will it be a rough road? Right now Hulu possesses very few exclusive agreements with its partners. Content owners, even though they’re shareholders of Hulu, are paranoid about restricting their content to a single online distributor.

Right now Hulu gets its income from sharing advertising revenues with content owners, but that’s keeping CBS out of the mix, and unless it builds a large enough audience, other content owners may chafe at those agreements.

Still, Hulu is trying some innovative techniques to attract advertisers. For example, “among the range of new advertising options, Hulu said that Nissan . . . can give Hulu viewers the option to choose to watch any one of its several car ads.”

That opens up a range of new possibilities as advertisers are able to better target their messaging.

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Entry was posted on Tuesday, March 11th, 2008 at 5:00 pm under Internet, Online video, YouTube.

Read more entries by Matt Jansen.
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