Hulu reported 47 million total unique viewers

Hulu announced a multitude of innovative advertising tools, original series orders and content licensing agreements, and reported significant audience growth to 47 million total unique viewers.

Hulu CEO Mike Hopkins, SVP of Advertising Sales Peter Naylor and SVP and Head of Content Craig Erwich took the stage to unveil the company’s newest advances in technology, content and advertising, alongside Hulu Original Series talent including J.J. Abrams, Elisabeth Moss, Samira Wiley, Alexis Bledel, Sarah Silverman, Mindy Kaling, Jeff Daniels and Josh Hutcherson.

Hulu’s 2017 Upfront announcements include:

Hulu Original Series The Handmaid’s Tale Renewed For Season Two

On the heels of its extraordinary week one premiere, Hulu is pleased to announce that it has picked up The Handmaid’s Tale for a second season, set to debut in 2018.

Based on the award-winning, best-selling novel of the same name by Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale premiere has been watched by more Hulu viewers than any other series premiere – original or acquired – on the service, drawing acclaim from both fans and critics.

The streaming service has picked up Marvel’s Runaways in its first series order with Marvel Television. The fan-favorite and groundbreaking comic book series will be brought to life on Hulu by the team behind The O.C. and Gossip Girl, Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage. Schwartz and Savage will serve as Co-Showrunners/writers and will executive produce the series along with Marvel’s, Jeph Loeb and Jim Chory.

Marvel’s Runaways is the story of six diverse teenagers who can barely stand each other but who must unite against a common foe – their parents.

In addition, Hulu announced a straight-to-series order for The First (working title), a drama set in the near future about the first human mission to Mars. The series is created and written by Oscar, Emmy, Golden Globe, and BAFTA Award-nominated Beau Willimon (House of Cards, Ides of March), who also serves as executive producer alongside his producing partner Jordan Tappis.

The First explores the challenges of taking the first steps toward interplanetary colonization. “

The First and Runaways join Hulu’s growing original programming slate, which includes The Handmaid’s Tale, The Looming Tower, Future Man, The Mindy Project, I Live You, America, National Treasue, Casual, The Path, Difficult People, Shut Eye and Chance.

Starting this fall, all Hulu advertisers will have access to a validated measurement solution across screens. In partnership with Nielsen, Hulu is extending Digital Ad Ratings (DAR) to the living room.  With more than 47 million total unique viewers, as measured by comScore — 32 million of which opt for ad-supported content — Hulu’s DAR solution brings accurate, holistic measurement to its advertising partners.

Through this solution, Hulu can now get complete measurement of viewership to streaming campaigns across all connected devices – all verified by a trusted third-party source.  Nielsen’s methodology will tag, collect and calibrate the data, leveraging Hulu’s robust first-party subscriber data and other third-party sources as the foundation for measurement. MAGNA, Horizon Media and GroupM are among the first agencies to adopt Hulu’s DAR solution a currency.

Following the official launch of its new, cutting-edge user experience and new live streaming service, Hulu’s SVP of Advertising Sales, Peter Naylor, announced that the new product will offer opportunities for advertisers and marketers, including dynamic ad insertion capabilities.

The personalized new live streaming service will give brands the ability to reach audiences on cable networks for the two minutes of local breaks per hour.  And, in an effort to provide viewers with more timely and relevant ads, Hulu announced it will give advertisers access to the same two-minutes of inventory per hour of cable programming in the cloud DVR environment.