ComScore: Hulu viewership skyrockets

Maybe it was thanks to its surprisingly popular Super Bowl commercial featuring an alien Alec Baldwin, or maybe it's thanks to its clean interface and ever-growing library of content, but Hulu's popularity exploded last month.

According to comScore's Video Metrix service, Hulu became the fourth most-viewed video site on the Internet, bypassing Microsoft, Viacom, and AOL sites, and snaring a 2.5% share of the market. The NBC-News Corp. joint venture climbed two positions in the ranking and experienced a 42% increase in views in February. The majority of the growth (33%) took place after the Super Bowl advertisement began running.

Google's YouTube, of course, continues to dominate this category with nearly 41% of the market and stands nearly 38% ahead of its nearest competitor, Fox Interactive, which holds only 3.5% market share according to views.

But in this business, it's not only about views, it's also about a platform's ability to generate ad revenue, and that is where Hulu has a potential runaway lead over YouTube. Even though YouTube has more unique views and more clicks per viewer, the majority of the content is amateur-made and offers nearly nothing in the way of advertisement. Hulu, as some 333 million viewers now know, is all professional content with advertisements. Over 130 content providers have submitted to the site more than 1,000 television episodes and full-length movies.

With 75.5% of the online populace watching an average of 5 hours of streaming video (or over 13 billion clicks), the demand for a service like Hulu is rock solid.

And the site continues to expand. Newly-hired executive Johannes Larcher joined Hulu this week to lead the site's expansion into international markets. This push was punctuated by last night's live stream of President Barack Obama's second prime-time news conference that was open to international audiences on Hulu.