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Hulu expects to post $1 billion in revenue in 2013, up from $695 million a year ago, the streaming-media’s new CEO said in a blog post on Wednesday.
Chief executive Mike Hopkins also said that Hulu will double its efforts to obtain original content.
“When you think about the fact that Hulu first launched out of beta in 2008, it’s quite an impressive feat to scale the business from zero to $1 billion over the course of just six years,” Hopkins wrote.
“We launched more than 20 Hulu Originals in 2013, and plan to double that number over the next few years,” he wrote.
STORY: The Rule Breakers of 2013
Some of the original content featured at the service now includes The Awesomes, Behind the Mask and The Wrong Mans, and they were “among the top 10 most watched shows on Hulu each week a new episode aired,” Hopkins wrote.
He also boasted that seven of the top 10 shows on TV can be viewed via Hulu now: Modern Family, The Voice, The Blacklist, Agents of SHIELD, Scandal, Grey’s Anatomy and Sleepy Hollow.
Hopkins said the service now advertises more than 1,000 brands, up 15 percent year-over-year, and more than 5 million subscribers pay for the premium service, Hulu Plus.
Hulu has 488 content providers that supply it with 86,000 TV episodes, and the company hired 140 people in the last half of the year to raise their total staff to 725 employees, Hopkins said.
Hulu is a joint venture of Walt Disney, 21st Century Fox and NBCUniversal and is not required to publicly release its financial details. The company, though, has mulled an initial public offering on multiple occasions.
In his blog post, Hopkins didn’t mention whether or not the company will turn a profit in 2013.
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