Hulu Questions Count of Its Audience

Hulu Questions Count of Its Audience.- BRIAN STELTER Published: May 14, 2009, NYT.com .- Does Hulu, the Web’s most popular place for TV viewing, reach nine million people a month or 42 million?

Millions of dollars in advertising revenue may hinge on the answer. But no one seems to know for sure how big the site’s audience is.

Any way the streams of shows like “Fringe” and “30 Rock” are counted, it is clear that Hulu’s growth has been explosive, up 490 percent year over year, according to Nielsen Online. Hulu executives, however, are fretting that the company, one of the leading purveyors of ratings data, is undercounting the site’s visitors. They say Nielsen’s numbers hurt Hulu’s perception among advertisers and the press ...