By Katrina Woo & the STEBA Executive Board
As streaming takes the industry by storm, it almost feels as if you’re in a whole new world when your eyes are glued to your screen. Well now, you really could be. As media convergence within the industry is amplified by development in both content and strategy, a new player enters the arena. Streaming in the metaverse, a new collaborative endeavor between NBCUniversal’s Peacock and Meta’s VR division, introduces a fusion of entertainment experiences with unique value offerings that the industry has yet to see.
On April 12th, NBCUniversal’s Peacock and Meta (formerly Facebook) announced that they would be partnering to deliver metaverse streaming experiences for US audiences. The collaboration is a teaser for what’s to come in the next three years of their partnership, but starts here with a more immersive content experience for users by making a variety of NBCU IP like movies, scripted shows, and live sports accessible to stream through their Meta VR headsets.
Finding innovative ways to differentiate the consumer experience becomes harder and harder as the streaming industry becomes more and more competitive. The Extended Reality (XR) industry is projected to see great worldwide growth into 2026 reaching $100 billion USD, indicative of the new value offerings that it presents as the future of technology develops. This partnership is a strategic decision that will give Peacock a competitive edge as it provides users with an immersive and almost futuristic streaming experience into which big players like Netflix and Disney+ have yet to venture into.
The Peacock-Meta integration boasts certain features such as watching multiple screens streaming Peacock simultaneously in the metaverse. With nearly 200 million users dual-screening* in the US as of 2022, this feature may prove to be beneficial in keeping customers engaged on the platform by creating an environment that fully immerses their activities and interactions with NBCU IP. Limiting the distractions users have in their immediate environment may mitigate the growing struggle for content houses to retain viewers’ full attention during streaming and in turn support a stronger affinity to their brand or content.
Additionally, the platform will allow users to resize the content window to emulate a theater-like experience when streaming. Hallmarks of the theater-going experience, such as big screens, are hard to replicate in the comfort of your home despite the accessibility to content through streaming. This resizing feature could be a unique value proposition in this model, so it will be interesting to see how audiences will respond to and utilize it.
On the other hand, the decrease in annual revenue since Meta’s 2021 rebrand has brought about reasonable cause for concern given the tech empire’s previous trajectory of revenue growth. Bringing Peacock’s IP onto Meta’s platforms such as Horizon Worlds and the Meta Avatars Store creates a more relatable touchpoint for general audiences, potentially funneling an existing loyal fanbase onto Meta’s platform and diversifying the audience that NBCU’s content captures.
Concurrent to this launch is a new bundle package where existing Meta Quest users subscribed to Peacock get three months of Peacock Premium free, and new buyers of the Meta Quest 2 or Meta Quest Pro get 1 year of Peacock Premium for free. These additional value offerings create new opportunities and experiences that marry VR and streaming together, whilst developing new revenue streams for NBCU and Meta.
This partnership is an exemplary display of the convergence of media and technology that permeates the industry today. As sectors create value on the foundations and infrastructure developed by one another, they are able to add unique value creation to audience experiences and innovative strategies to bolster or propel company success.
Lesson: Media convergence creates space for unique value creation and opportunities for media forms to evolve in collaboration with one another. At its core, this partnership is a testament to the exciting future of streaming strategy when companies think creatively about how to best serve their audiences. As the streaming industry continues to grow in its competitiveness and the hype around the metaverse slowly fizzles down, Peacock and Meta are sure to bring some exciting new experiences to the forefront of the consumer experience.
* Dual screening, or second screen usage, refers to multitasking or having multiple different smart devices open simultaneously. For example, playing Candy Crush whilst watching Umbrella Academy on Netflix would be considered dual screening.
Interested in learning more? Check out these resources:
Is the Metaverse a Flop? Investigating Its Decline in Popularity | Medium
Bob Chapek’s Metaverse Division Cut in Disney Layoffs | The Hollywood Reporter
Can streaming video survive the metaverse? | Fortune
2023 Will Be a Year of Trial and Error for Streaming Companies | Variety