NBCUniversal is shaping the future of Peacock, with a vision to move beyond just a streaming home for programming. Instead, it wants to become an entertainment platform that is a place to foster and grow the fandoms and communities engaging with its content via new formats and AI-powered features that promise more user control and opportunities to participate.
NBCU held a press briefing in NYC Thursday where executives including NBCU Media Group Chairman Matt Strauss, Chairman of Bravo & Peacock Unscripted Frances Berwick, and John Jelley, SVP of Product and User Experience, discussed the product roadmap strategy and previewed new features including AI-powered personalized short-form playlists coming to mobile coming this year.
In terms of becoming an “entertainment platform” beyond just a “streaming service”, Strauss was sure to emphasize NBCU doesn’t mean a platform of the something-for-everyone or “flea market” variety but wants to extend the offering around video content.
“It’s very purposeful, we know who our fans are,” Strauss said in designing a product to cater to fandoms.
“You have an entertainment platform with millions of customers who spend hours on your platform engaging currently with long-form programming. How do you expand that aperture to give them more to super-serve that fandom so they never really feel like they need to anywhere else to get the content that they love?” Strauss explained, citing that notion as a guiding principle of the Peacock product roadmap.
It’s being selective and focused on NBCU’s key areas of live sports and events to tap into the “pulse” and urgency of live paired with entertainment content – including the unscripted powerhouse of Bravo – which together present opportunities to drive tune-in and reach as well as deepen fandoms, ultimately driving more engagement and time spent on Peacock.
Similar to others, Peacock is less focused on the number of subscribers that it has than on how much time they’re spending on the platform.
Per Strauss, growing share of time spent with consumers is Peacock’s priority and he noted the best way to do that is to get users to open the app as frequently and for as long as possible.
And with a live event scheduled for nearly every day of the year, NBC wants to leverage its mix of appointment viewing and tentpole events paired with fan-favorite series that keep viewers coming back to its app more frequently and for multiple reasons.
As we get into the mobile features teed up, it’s worth noting that while tied to specific types of content at first (such as unscripted Bravo), NBCU execs said all are designed to scale and work across content types eventually.
Infinite personalized Bravo vertical video feeds with AI Andy Cohen avatar
Peacock introduced vertical video clips across genres in early 2025, but now it’s using generative and agentic AI to deepen and grow engagement with one of its core fan bases via the “Your Bravoverse” feature for mobile.
The AI-powered vertical video experience launches this summer with a home screen icon on the Peacock mobile app. After entering a few prompts, a vertical video feed highlighting key moments from across the Bravo unscripted universe is guided by Watch What Happens Live host Andy Cohen’s video avatar.
To create the feature NBCU used AI to bring together decades of Bravo franchise content with over 5,000 hours of footage, extracting thousands of clips. It used genAI to map storylines across the Bravo universe and create a global map of narratives across seasons and franchises – with more than 600 billion viewing variants possible.
Those moments are stitched together using AI alongside Cohen and the Bravo team’s perspectives into an endless swipe-able playlists (or “play tree” ) of short-form clips featuring iconic scenes, connected storylines and behind-the-scenes action.
Playlists group short-form clips featuring similar themes and interconnected storylines in categories fans are known to love like “Explosive Walkouts,” “Best of Savage Comebacks”, “Icy One-liners” – and apparently “Pedicures”.
The Andy Cohen AI avatar introduces new playlists and share takes, an area where NBCU said brands or sponsors will eventually also be able to be integrated.
While the feeds are short-form vertical video, it’s also meant to drive engagement with Bravo series long-form content. Each clip provides an easy and direct link to jump straight to the full episode with one tap to watch for those that want to go deeper into the story behind the moments.
Peacock platform should be the best place for fans to engage
There are a few things Peacock is aiming to do with this feature, which can both provide sampling to give new viewers a taste of content as well as a fuller or deeper menu of franchise engagement options for existing fans.
But no matter their status, if viewers are watching and engaging with NBCU content, the company wants its platform to be the best place to do so.
It’s no secret that viewers of all ages – and particularly younger consumers - are consuming short-form and vertical video on social and user-generated platforms like YouTube, TikTok and others. So one reason for the new features is that they speak to the way people are consuming content.
Another though, according to Strauss, is “that what fuels a lot of that engagement on these other platforms actually comes from the long-form video” as people watch and want to engage further.
That factor played into Peacock’s product roadmap, as it’s seen fans of its content, such as Bravo for example, like to engage, share and discuss the shows on other platforms – but NBCU wants to own the place they do so.
For example, Strauss noted the large fandom around Love Island USA last summer, at the height of which, the Love Island USA app became No. 1 in Apple’s app store.
While fandom is great, he acknowledged that meant users had to leave the Peacock platform.
The notion here is, “the best place for fans should be on the platform that created the stories,” which isn’t always the case today, but where NBCU sees so-called white space opportunity primed to jump into for growth.
Strauss emphasized “video is still the center of gravity” for the streamer but the focus now is shifting to build experiences around the NBC and Bravo video content on the platform that also keep users within the confines of Peacock’s app.
When it comes to engagement, My Bravoverse presents an opportunity to give new fans a taste of the unscripted franchises with key clips.
According to Jelley, NBCU has already seen that sampling vertical video leads to longer watch times, and it offers a good way to sample and then decide what to watch.
People also come back to their phone more often, encouraging more habitual use and engagement all in support of growing that share of time spent, which NBCU is prioritizing for Peacock.
It also serves as a way to let avid Bravo fans go deeper into the content and be more connected to the people and franchises.
Fandom around Bravo content is already strong. NBCU disclosed Bravo viewers watch an average of 24 hours of the content every month, with the most avid fans watching up to 75 episodes per month.
Those fans are helping fuel Peacock, with half of average Bravo series viewing coming from consumption on the streamer and nearly every returning Bravo series up season-over-season on Peacock, averaging 41% growth, according to Berwick.
Subscribers that were acquired via Bravo content also have the highest engagement on Peacock with other types of content. Per NBCU, Bravo viewers on Peacock watch 92% more non-Bravo hours of content than the norm on the platform.
And Berwick said these audiences don’t churn - they grow.
Real-time live vertical video
It’s not just Bravo content that’s getting vertical video feeds.
In what Peacock’s claiming as a first, this summer it will introduce vertical video feeds for full live sports games, powered by AI – launching in beta for the NBA.
It’s joining Peacock within the earlier Courtside Live alternate camera angle feature. To get live vertical video, NBCU uses AI to follow the key on-screen action (such as where the basketball is) and follows it in real-time while automatically cropping for vertical video.
Vertical video feeds are also coming to Peacock for NBC content like Saturday Night Live – where it reasons clips also get consumed on social video sites. Later this year mobile users will have a continuous swipe-able experience to watch sketch after SNL sketch (and again the ability to jump into full episodes with one tap).
“If you’re watching SNL, the best place to watch SNL should be on Peacock,” Strauss said.
In addition to new experiences for fans to drive engagement, connection and time spent, Peacock also benefits from data it gets through the upcoming mobile features and personalization is continually improved.
Jelley noted the AI-powered feeds learn from user behavior with every swipe, click and scroll – giving both real-time personalization to users and subscriber insights to Peacock.
While starting on mobile, My Bravoverse is expected to come to CTV, although no timing disclosed yet.
Expanding games with Wolf Games, Jeopardy
Peacock also partnered with Wolf Games to launch new exclusive AI-driven mobile games tied to IP for fans of Dick Wolf-created franchises like Law & Order and is adding a Jeopardy mini-game this spring.
It knows the IP resonates as Jelley disclosed 500,000 players have used a Wheel of Fortune game since Peacock launched it.
Again, here the addition of more games comes back to extending engagement and “making it a natural continuum” from when users watch long-form content, according to Strauss.
When a viewer finishes a show like Law & Order, instead of surfacing a recommendation on what to watch next, now Peacock can instead ask if they want to continue or deepen the engagement with a game, a podcast or a personalized vertical video feed.
Today, consumers are typically choosing streaming services based primarily on price and content, according to Strauss.
With the new features “we see the opportunity to expand that to price, content and experiences,” he said, noting the product updates announced Friday represent just the "tip of the spear" for Peacock.
Here's a product demo image of the new mobile features from NBCU:
