Peacock subscribers will immediately see ads when they open a streaming app or website next year. It’s a bold new strategy to attract advertisers – something that is becoming increasingly important for subscription-based streaming services – but it also risks alienating viewers.
As reported by Variety, the new type of ads will appear on the profile selection page that appears when a customer launches Peacock. Starting next year, the profile page will be dominated by an advertising image taking up most of the page, rather than just showing your individual Peacock profile. As you can see here, the circles of NBCUniversal-owned characters selected for the user profile will be moved to a vertical column on the left side of the screen.
To avoid seeing what NBCUniversal is calling “inbound ads” every time you open Peacock, you’ll need to subscribe to Peacock’s most expensive plan, which is ad-free and starts at $17 per month (Peacock’s ad-based plans start at $8/month.)
NBCUniversal’s announcement claimed that Peacock would be the first streaming service to implement this type of advertising. But this may not be as big a deal as the entertainment giant thinks, as subscribers may soon find the startup’s ads disruptive.
The peacock is not making money
Over the past few years, it has become more important for streaming services to generate revenue beyond subscription fees. Peacock and many other streaming services are struggling with profitability after focusing for years on expensive content production and licensing to attract subscribers.
For its part, Peacock has 41 million subscribers and is not profitable. In its most recent quarterly earnings report shared in October, NBCUniversal parent company Comcast reported that the service lost $217 million in earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, compared to a loss of $436 million in the same quarter in 2024. Also, Peacock has struggled to grow viewership and has had the same number of subscribers since Q1 2025. In Q1 2024, Peacock had 31. million customers.
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