Forty-six percent of U.S. premium SVOD subscriptions at services that offer both tiers were on ad-supported plans by end-Q1 2025, up from roughly 33 percent two years earlier, according to Antenna’s Q2 2025 State of Subscriptions report. That single line, more than any earnings beat or executive memo this cycle, is the planning input ad buyers and ad-tech operators are taking into the 2026 NewFronts and upfronts.
Antenna’s data covers Discovery+, Disney+, Hulu, Max, Netflix, Paramount+, and Peacock. By end-Q1 2025, ad-supported plans accounted for nearly 100 million U.S. subs across that universe, up from 53 million at end-Q1 2023, and ad tiers drove 71 percent of net adds across the prior nine quarters. The composition of growth split sharply: ad-supported net adds climbed from 19.8 million in 2023 to 27.4 million in 2024, while ad-free net adds dropped from 14.1 million to 5.4 million in the same window. The chart above traces the ad-tier share trajectory, with vertical annotations at the Netflix Basic with Ads launch on Nov. 3, 2022, Disney+ Basic on Dec. 8, 2022, and Max’s $9.99 ad tier on May 23, 2023. Almost three years after the last of those launches, the ad tier is structurally where U.S. premium SVOD growth lives.
Antenna’s Q1 2026 State of Subscriptions report, published in March, named the inflection in plain language: “For many years, the ‘Streaming Wars’ were defined by double-digit growth and massive acquisition spend. But in 2025, that era ended.” Total U.S. premium SVOD subscriber growth was 7 percent in 2025, the first single-digit year for the category, down from 12 percent in 2024. Weighted average churn stabilized at 4.6 percent, and seven of nine premium SVOD services showed more stable churn patterns in 2025 than in 2023. Antenna CEO Jonathan Carson’s firm has been the trade press’s standard reference for SVOD subscriber metrics since 2020; this is the most consequential editorial call it has issued.
The Walt Disney Company’s (NYSE: DIS) Q1 fiscal 2026 print on Feb. 2, 2026 was the corporate ratification. Disney reported $25.98 billion in revenue, up 5 percent; $5.35 billion in Entertainment DTC revenue, up 11 percent; and $450 million in DTC operating income, up 72 percent. It did so without disclosing Disney+, Hulu, or ESPN+ subscriber counts or ARPU — a change Disney announced on Aug. 6, 2025, explaining that “quarterly updates on the number of paid subscribers and ARPU have become less meaningful to evaluating the performance of our businesses.” The last Disney+/Hulu combined sub count Disney published was 183 million as of June 2025. Netflix (NASDAQ: NFLX) made the same move first, announcing in April 2024 it would stop reporting quarterly subs in Q1 2025. Two of the three largest U.S. premium SVOD operators have now stopped reporting quarterly sub counts, both during the same calendar year.
The ad money tracks the same call. Per Variety, citing Media Dynamics’ 2025-26 upfront tally, broadcast primetime commitments fell 2.5 percent to $9.1 billion and cable fell 4.3 percent to $8.68 billion in the cycle just closed, while streaming primetime commitments rose 17.9 percent to $13.2 billion. That is roughly $620 million of linear primetime commitments lost and $2.1 billion of streaming primetime commitments gained in a single cycle, the dollar movement that an ad-tier inventory base of ~100 million subs makes possible. TVNewsCheck corroborates the same Media Dynamics figures. Variety’s Brian Steinberg also forecast, per Variety, that 2026-27 cable advertising will decline another 10 percent while broadcast rises about 5 percent, suggesting the trend has another cycle to run.
A skeptical reader is right to want pre-emption. The trade press has called the streaming wars over before — CNBC ran the line in May 2022 after Netflix’s first quarterly subscriber loss in a decade. The earlier “over” calls failed because subscriber growth resumed and ad tiers were still launching; the score-by-subs framework held while operators were still reporting the score. The 2025 evidence is structurally different. The operators themselves have stopped reporting the scoreboard the older calls argued over — Netflix in Q1 2025, Disney in Q1 FY26 — so the metric is no longer being kept. Category growth has crossed into single digits for the first time. Ad-tier share has crossed 46 percent of subs and 71 percent of net adds, which means the unit of supply ad buyers transact looks materially different from the unit operators marketed against in 2019-2022.
Operators and analysts are reading it the same way. On Disney’s Feb. 2 call, CFO Hugh Johnston said the company expects to lift DTC operating margin from a roughly 5 percent mark in fiscal 2024 to a “10 margin” in fiscal 2026. Futuresource Consulting analyst Anastasia Budash framed the strategic pivot on April 23: “The era of growth at any cost is over.” Budash’s piece flags two complications worth carrying forward: ad revenue “has yet to fully compensate for the difference in return from standard and premium plans,” and “repeated price rises, even on ad plans, are already emerging as a key driver of churn.”
The market is still growing. Netflix ended 2025 at 325 million global subs, up 24 million from end-2024, reaffirmed double-digit revenue-growth guidance for 2026, and Antenna characterizes the new phase as more stable growth. The category-defining metric, double-digit acquisition-driven growth at the top of operators’ valuation case, is what 2025 retired. Four calendar triggers will test the new frame: NewFronts week May 5–9 is the first major sales cycle planned around ad-tier supply rather than total subs; Disney’s Q2 fiscal 2026 print in early May is the second quarter under the new disclosure regime; Netflix’s Q2 print in mid-July gives the next read on the company’s $3 billion 2026 ad-revenue framing; and Antenna’s Q2 2026 State of Subscriptions report, due summer, is where the 46 percent ad-tier share number gets its next update.
