The success of Peacock, Comcast’s ad-supported streaming service, is still primarily sized through an amorphous sign-ups metric. But the company is gradually pulling back the curtain a bit more.
Peacock now has 42 million sign-ups, up from 33 million at the end of 2020. Comcast CEO Brian Roberts said Peacock monthly users watch 20% more programming hours per month than NBC viewers and that the service just crossed one billion hours watched.
What he didn’t say is how many of Peacock’s users are paid premium; how many stick with the cheaper, ad-supported product; or how many are watching for free. The company did disclose that Peacock contributed $91 million of revenue and an adjusted EBITDA loss of $277 million during the quarter.
NBCUniversal CEO Jeff Shell, however, provided a significantly more granular view of how Peacock is doing about one year after its initial launch on Comcast X1 and Flex. He said Peacock’s sign-ups are broken down further into monthly active accounts (MAA), which NBCU defines as households that pay subscription fees or people who use the service monthly.
Shell said that roughly one-third of Peacock’s sign-ups are MAAs, meaning that about 14 million accounts are either using Peacock regularly or paying for it.
“That is about a third of where Hulu is today. We’ve only been national for less than a year and Hulu’s been around for 13 years. So, we’re very pleased with how that’s grown steadily,” Shell said, adding that MAAs somewhat understate Peacock engagement levels since there are many people who use Peacock but not enough to qualify as an MAA. He said that if active users were measured on a quarterly assumption, then Peacock would add another 10 million to its current MAA total.
Roberts cited the interest and engagement as catalysts for opening up additional advertising inventory outside of the Peacock launch partnerships. Shell added that NBCU is now exceeding guarantees it made to those partners so Peacock is currently selling excess inventory on a spot basis and at CPMs that are equal or sometimes higher than what NBC Prime demands.
In the fourth quarter, Peacock’s initial sponsorship partner deals start to roll off and the service begins selling all of its inventory on a spot basis. The company is currently working on getting upfront commitments for the service.
Roberts also talked about international expansion plans for Peacock. NBCUniversal is hoping to use Sky’s existing scale in Europe to expand access and strike partnerships with local programmers and distributors.