Hey there, hold the hullabaloo over Hulu

But some new statistics on Hulu undercut that sense of invulnerability.

October was a record month for Hulu. By Nielsen Online's count, traffic skyrocketed by 76% compared with September to 7.4 million uniques. It was the biggest audience Hulu had registered since coming out of beta in March and its largest month-to-month increase.

Nielsen Video Census, a separate tracking that takes into account streaming data on Hulu's syndication partners and thousands of embedded players, put the count at a personal-best 9 million.

The upticks probably came as no surprise to anyone at Hulu given the confluence of programing additions that were on the site in October. First and foremost, "Saturday Night Live" sketches featuring Tina Fey's Sarah Palin impressions were huge draws, inflated by the fact that NBC Uni was able to keep the clips largely off YouTube and restrict them to Hulu and NBC.com. The election in general was a boon in October -- the homestretch of the campaign season -- which likely lifted the performance of Hulu attractions like "The Daily Show With Jon Stewart," not to mention live streams of two presidential debates.

Adding another ingredient to this perfect storm was the timing of the TV fall season, which gave Hulu an influx of new programing, particularly a selection of NBC shows that premiered on Hulu a week earlier than they did on air.

But now that the numbers are in on Hulu's November performance, October feels more like a lucky aberration than the makings of a hockey-stick-shaped growth curve that would have allowed Hulu to earn its hype. Nielsen Online tracked Hulu falling back to earth at a rate of 33% from October-November; the Video Census showed a 16% drop, and that's a more important metric given that the bulk of Hulu's ad revenue comes from advertising in-stream, not display units.

Hulu didn't carry its October momentum into November. That's not exactly tragic; November still managed to top September, which is a good sign, as is a 7% increase in the number of total streams generated (according to Census). But the key takeaway is that Hulu is not quite the juggernaut some have made it out to be; behemoth status can't be conferred on a site that sees its fortunes rise and fall depending on which videos are new that month. Turns out that having an active long tail didn't guarantee Hulu's growth after all.

If anything, November should wake up Hulu to the fact that its site needs to be programed 12 months a year to maintain steady growth. NBC Uni and News Corp. are going to have to concentrate on hits to stay in growth mode on the site.

The data comes on the heels of a new study from a British economist whose analysis of sales for online singles concluded that 85% of all tracks don't so much as muster a single sale. Ad-supported video is a separate category, but Hulu might find out the hard way that it really isn't all that different.

Reuters/Hollywood Reporter