The online journal Huffington Post and owner AOL will launch a video-streaming network between Q2 and Q3, with 12 hours of programming running five days a week.
Journalist and founder Arianna Huffington announced the network yesterday in an enthusiastic post on her website, nicknamed “HuffPo.” As she described, AOL had acquired HuffPo a year ago this week. HuffPost Streaming Network will be overseen by founding editor Roy Sekoff and will sit on every available platform, including desktops, smartphones, tablets and “over-the-top TV,” that is, off network. “We won't be limited by the usual time constraints of TV,” claims Huffington.
While the network will launch with 12 hours of programming, HuffPo plans to increase that to 16 hours by end-of-year 2013. Sekoff described plans for a “never-ending talk show,” and plans to post 30,000 clips during the first year, writes WWD. Content will “emulate the online experience,” writes Huffington, with its impressive—albeit largely unqualified—statistics. Huffington claimed in her announcement the site has 36.2 million unique visitors a month, where its advertising section claims 28. Huffington further claims 253,331 new comments on a single day (January 25 2012) and 1.4 million Facebook referrals.
The Huffington Post advertiser section appears both on its site and on AOL, and enthuses to advertisers that it is “Breaking the news—and the mold.” HuffPo offers only vague statements about its demographic. Their breakdown of their reach:
- 12.8M women every month, who HuffPo reminds advertisers “control 85% of household spending”
- HuffPo visitors are “more likely to have a [household income] of over 150K than average internet users”
- “More likely to have a post-graduate degree than average internet users”
- “More likely to be business decision-makers than average internet users”