Peacock generated $4.98 in monthly advertising revenue per paid subscriber during the second quarter of 2026, up 43% from $3.47 a year earlier, according to figures in Comcast's trending schedules published on July 23, 2026. The same disclosures show the streaming service's cost base rising 28% and the rest of the Media segment shedding a third of its earnings.

The headline from Comcast's second quarter was Peacock's first profitable period since launch: $189 million of adjusted EBITDA against a $101 million loss a year earlier. That number has been widely repeated. The composition behind it has not.

Three documents published alongside the results carry the detail: the quarterly trending schedules, the Form 10-Q for the period ended June 30, 2026, and the transcript of the July 23 analyst call. A separate read on the same numbers, distributed on July 24, 2026 by Cleveland Research Company analysts Ross Walthall, Miranda Barrett and Brant Fecteau, isolates where the growth came from and how repeatable it is.

The revenue line that produced the profit

Peacock recorded $1,895 million of revenue in the quarter against operating costs of $1,706 million. Revenue grew 53.8% year over year. Costs grew 28.0%. The gap between those two rates is the entire profit.

Within that revenue line, advertising contributed $717 million, up 67.9% from $427 million. Distribution contributed $1,155 million, up 52.2% from $759 million. Other revenue fell to $23 million from $46 million.

The mix shifted. Advertising accounted for 37.8% of Peacock revenue in the quarter, against 34.7% a year earlier. That is a modest change in percentage terms and a substantial one in absolute terms: the service added $290 million of advertising revenue in twelve months, almost exactly the size of the year-over-year swing in its adjusted EBITDA.

Chief Financial Officer Jason Armstrong told analysts that Peacock advertising revenue "increased nearly 70%, fueled by multiple drivers with notable callouts, including the simulcast of Telemundo's FIFA World Cup, the NBA Playoffs, and the latest season of Love Island."

Monetisation per subscriber

Paid subscribers ended the quarter at 48 million, up 2 million sequentially and 7 million against the second quarter of 2025. Dividing quarterly advertising revenue by closing subscribers and by three months produces a monthly advertising yield of $4.98 per paid subscriber. The equivalent figure for the second quarter of 2025 was $3.47. The increase is 43.4%.

That measure is a rough instrument. It divides advertising revenue across the whole paid base rather than the ad-supported portion of it, and Peacock sells an ad-free Premium Plus tier at $16.99 a month that generates no advertising revenue at all. Using average rather than closing subscribers lifts the second quarter figure to roughly $5.09. Neither variant changes the direction.

Total revenue per paid subscriber reached $13.16 a month, against $10.02 a year earlier. Cost per paid subscriber reached $11.85, against $10.84. Revenue per subscriber rose 31.4% while cost per subscriber rose 9.3%. That spread between revenue growth and cost growth is what a scaling subscription business is supposed to produce, and it had not appeared in Peacock's quarterly disclosures before.

The quarterly series shows how much event scheduling moves the number. In the first quarter of 2026, which carried the Super Bowl and the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics, advertising yield reached $6.53 per subscriber per month. In the third quarter of 2025 it was $3.88. In the fourth quarter of 2025 it was $4.27. The second quarter figure sits between the extremes, closer to the top.

The rest of Media went the other way

Media segment revenue rose 25.3% to $5,691 million and segment adjusted EBITDA rose 3.7% to $708 million. Subtract Peacock from both sides and a different picture emerges.

Media revenue excluding Peacock was $3,796 million, up 14.7% from $3,311 million. Media adjusted EBITDA excluding Peacock was $519 million, down from $784 million. That is a decline of 33.8% on revenue that grew.

The cause is disclosed rather than inferred. Comcast attributed higher Media operating expenses to programming costs associated with NBA rights and the FIFA World Cup. Armstrong told analysts the company was absorbing the full cost of the NBA contract in its first year "while the revenue opportunity builds over time." The quarter was the last of that first full year.

For buyers, the distinction matters when assessing pricing behaviour. A segment whose non-streaming earnings fell by a third while carrying record sports inventory has limited room to discount. A streaming unit that has just crossed into profit has more.

Where the linear money came from

Media domestic advertising revenue reached $2,163 million against $1,395 million, a 55.0% increase. Comcast attributed $440 million of that to incremental FIFA World Cup revenue. Excluding the tournament, the line grew 23.5% to $1,723 million, which the company attributed to the NBA and to higher revenue at Peacock.

Across the first half of 2026, the Media segment recorded $5,616 million of domestic advertising revenue against $2,863 million in the comparable period, according to the Form 10-Q. That near doubling reflects a six-month stretch containing the Super Bowl, the Winter Olympics, the NBA playoffs and the World Cup. No comparable half-year sits ahead.

A second advertising line runs through the connectivity business and behaved differently. Residential Connectivity & Platforms advertising revenue was $962 million, up 1.1% from $951 million, and $1,913 million for the half against $1,850 million. Comcast attributed the increase to higher domestic political advertising and higher revenue from its advanced advertising business, offset by lower domestic nonpolitical advertising and lower international advertising.

Read together, those two lines describe a business where growth is concentrated in live sport and in political money, not in general brand demand.

The independent read

Cleveland Research reached the same conclusion from outside the company. Its July 24 note states that "advertising strength remains concentrated in premium content: World Cup, NBA Playoffs, Love Island," and frames subscriber and advertising growth as coming primarily from those premium events. The firm also recorded that management guided Peacock profitability to vary sequentially with event scheduling while improving on an annual basis.

That concentration is measurable. Peacock advertising revenue for the first half of 2026 was $1,618 million against $841 million a year earlier, a 92.4% increase. Half-year adjusted EBITDA was a loss of $243 million, against a loss of $316 million. The profitable quarter has not yet produced a profitable half.

Co-Chief Executive Mike Cavanagh addressed the durability question directly on the call, saying that Peacock profitability "is going to vary quarter-by-quarter, just based on the timing of sports schedules and other content hitting one quarter versus another," and framing annual rather than quarterly measurement as the right horizon. He described the underlying approach as "building Peacock around a dual revenue model supported by a broad content mix across sports, next-day NBC and Bravo, film, originals, news, library, and major events."

What the third quarter removes

The second quarter carried the NBA playoffs, the FIFA World Cup on Telemundo and Peacock, and a season of Love Island USA concurrently. June was Peacock's largest viewership month on record. Comcast stated that the tournament produced the ten most-watched matches in Spanish-language history across its properties.

None of those three properties recurs in the third quarter of 2026 in the same form. The comparison base is a third quarter of 2025 in which Peacock advertising revenue was $477 million and the service lost $217 million at the EBITDA line. Growth against that base is likely; a repeat of a $717 million advertising quarter, on the evidence of the disclosed series, is not the default assumption.

Why this matters for the marketing community

Streaming sellers have spent five years asking buyers to fund growth. A seller that has crossed into profitability is a different negotiating counterparty, and the per-subscriber figures show where the pricing power sits: advertising yield rose faster than subscriber count, which means Peacock extracted more from each viewer rather than simply reaching more of them.

That happened inside a market already reallocating budget. CTV advertising is projected to reach approximately $38 billion in 2026, or 43% of total television advertising spend, with ad-supported streaming reaching 209.4 million United States viewers. Daily connected television viewing reached 2 hours and 37 minutes per adult, up 8%, as smart televisions reached 82% of United States homes.

Competitive pricing pressure is arriving from the other direction. Netflix put its global ad-supported reach at 250 million monthly viewers at its May 13, 2026 upfront, and is tracking toward roughly $3 billion in advertising revenue for the year. On July 20, 2026, three days before Comcast reported, Netflix inventory entered The Trade Desk's Sellers and Publishers 500+ marketplace with private-deal gating and spend minimums removed. Access to premium streaming supply is getting cheaper to obtain at the same moment Peacock's yield per user is climbing.

The format layer explains part of the yield increase. NBCUniversal introduced programmatic pause advertisements and live sports measurement tools in December 2025, with the Live in Browse feature reaching more than 80% of daily Peacock users. High-impact formats priced above standard spots raise revenue per impression without requiring additional inventory, which is precisely the pattern the per-subscriber numbers describe.

Two structural questions sit underneath the result. The first concerns measurement confidence: research published in July 2026 found 43% of connected television buyers uncertain about where their advertisements actually ran, and profitability does not resolve transparency. The second concerns ownership. Comcast announced on June 29, 2026 that it intends to separate NBCUniversal and Sky through a tax-free spin-off expected within approximately twelve months, and the allocation of FreeWheel and Universal Ads between the two future companies remains unspecified. Cavanagh reiterated the approximately one-year timeline on the July 23 call.

A streaming service that monetises at $4.98 per subscriber per month is a more durable seller than one that monetises at $3.47. Whether that figure describes a business or a summer of sport is a question the third quarter will answer.

Timeline

Summary

Who: Comcast Corporation and its Media segment, including Peacock, NBC, Bravo and Telemundo. Co-Chief Executive Mike Cavanagh and Chief Financial Officer Jason Armstrong presented the results. Cleveland Research Company analysts Ross Walthall, Miranda Barrett and Brant Fecteau published an independent read of the same figures.

What: Quarterly disclosures showing Peacock advertising revenue of $717 million on 48 million paid subscribers, equivalent to $4.98 per subscriber per month against $3.47 a year earlier; Peacock revenue of $1,895 million against costs of $1,706 million; and Media segment adjusted EBITDA excluding Peacock of $519 million against $784 million.

When: Results for the quarter ended June 30, 2026, reported on July 23, 2026, with the Cleveland Research analysis distributed on July 24, 2026.

Where: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, covering United States domestic media operations including Peacock, NBC, Bravo and Telemundo.

Why: The per-subscriber figures show advertising yield rising faster than subscriber count, which distinguishes monetisation gains from audience gains, while the concentration of that growth in the FIFA World Cup, the NBA playoffs and Love Island USA leaves the durability of the result dependent on a third quarter that carries none of the three.