Yahoo! considering bid for Hulu to add video service

Yahoo! Inc. is considering bidding for Hulu LLC's streaming-TV service.

Yahoo! Inc. is considering bidding for Hulu LLC's streaming-TV service.

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Chief Executive Officer Marissa Mayer met with Hulu senior executives this month to learn more about the site.

A person familiar with knowledge of the matter said that Amazon.com Inc. has also expressed an interest in buying Hulu.

According to the Washington Times, with advertisers willing to pay a premium to run commercials alongside high-quality content, Mayer is seeking to add videos across Yahoo's products.

Hulu, owned by News Corp., Walt Disney Co. and Comcast Corp., offers free reruns of television shows and movies and provides newer programming and earlier access through an eight-dollars-a-month service.

Mayer was joined at the meeting with Hulu by Henrique de Castro, Yahoo's chief operating officer, the technology blog AllThingsDigital.com reported May 7.

Hulu Plus, started in 2010, provides access to a bigger library of shows and the ability to watch programs on mobile devices, Web-connected TV sets and video-game consoles.

According to the report, Hulu's revenue last year jumped more than 65 percent to 695 million dollars, driven by advertising and subscriptions, the company said on its blog.

The service has more than four million paying subscribers and served commercials from more than 1,000 advertisers in 2012, a 28 percent increase from a year earlier, the report added.