Have you ever been binge watching your favorite television show on Hulu and wished you could have a large, steaming hot pizza delivered straight to your door without even having to leave your web browser? Thanks to a new deal between Pizza Hut and Hulu, you will soon be able to.
Hulu is as online television streaming service that made $1 billion in revenue in 2013, according to the official Hulu blog , but is looking to expand revenue beyond advertising and subscriptions alone. This “in-stream purchase” service is the first of its kind, allowing viewers to order Pizza Hut either for pick-up or home delivery. As reported by Business Week, the spokesman for Pizza Hut, Doug Terfehr, made the following statement, “Our partnerships functions like a lot of advertising deals, but it was a cooperative effort to bring an experience that was fitting for the Hulu user.”
Business Week also reported that ads for the Pizza Hut service should start running on Hulu later this year, as soon as the final details of the partnership have been finalized. There are also plans to expand the service from desktop computers to other devices, possibly including smart phones, internet-connected televisions, and tablets.
The full Pizza Hut menu will be available through Hulu, and ordering will be as easy as clicking a button. You won’t even have to navigate away from the show you’re watching. According to Business Insider , the average user spends 50 minutes on Hulu every session. That may seem relatively short, but it’s certainly long enough to get hungry, and it won’t even take a minute of that time to place your order. Terfehr told Business Week , “As you watch your favorite show on Hulu, a Pizza Hut icon will display and enable you to place an order quickly while your show is paused.”
According to CNN , the chief executive of Hulu, Mike Hopkins, first announced the Pizza Hut ad campaign at Hulu’s annual advertisers presentation in New York this past Wednesday. He hopes this will encourage future partnerships between other advertisers and product services. Hopkins also voiced interest in integrating Hulu Plus into home television units, an advancement that Netflix is also exploring.
It’s possible that the partnership with Hulu is part of Pizza Hut’s attempt to turn the company around . After some recent financial struggles, Pizza Hut CEO David Novak has been searching for ways to deliver pizzas to customers as quickly and efficiently as their competitors. Pizza Hut is owned by the Yum! brand.
Hulu is owned by the parent companies of ABC, Fox, and NBC and provides free streaming of network programming.
[Image courtesy of Hulu ]