Kelly Campbell, the former president of Disney-operated streamer Hulu who abruptly left the company on Monday, will now be heading up another streaming service—Peacock—NBCUniversal said today.
Campbell will join the company in November as president, heading up Peacock’s streaming business and working with leadership across NBCU’s television, film, news and sports divisions on Peacock live and original programming. She will report to Matt Strauss, NBCUniversal’s chairman, direct-to-consumer and international.
“On the heels of Peacock’s success in its first year, we are thrilled to bring Kelly’s leadership and expertise to the team as we continue to accelerate Peacock’s vision and strategy,” said Strauss in a statement.
Campbell, who was named in the annual Adweek 50 list of top industry executives last year, had been with Hulu for more than four years after joining the company from Google to serve as chief marketing officer in 2017. She stepped into the role of president following the departure of longtime Hulu CEO Randy Freer in early 2020.
Campbell had been appointed to the position by Kevin Mayer, the prior head of Disney streaming services, who resigned in May 2020 for an ill-fated stint as the CEO of TikTok.
Peacock’s latest in growth efforts
Before arriving at Hulu, she spent a decade at Google, holding leadership and marketing roles in the Google Ads and Google Cloud businesses. She began her career at JPMorgan Chase.
She joins NBCU as the company continues to forge ahead in its streaming efforts, especially with year-old streamer Peacock, which it hopes will help it find a footing in the growing advertising opportunity presented by streaming video.
But she also takes over the platform at a time when Peacock not been able to enjoy the same level of explosive growth as some of its competitors. As of last quarter, executives said that Peacock had reached 52 million sign-ups, but it’s unclear how many of those customers are monthly active users, the primary key metric for media buyers as they evaluate the myriad streaming services and platforms looking to win their advertising budgets.
Also kept under wraps is the percentage of those sign-ups who are customers who pay for additional programming through the service’s two paid tiers.
NBCUniversal says those sign-up rates are promising, and the company is hoping to find big linear and digital audiences this fall and in early 2022, when NBC Sports has the rights to both Super Bowl 56 and the upcoming Winter Olympics in Beijing. The company has already locked in more than 85% of its Super Bowl 56 in-game advertising inventory, it said in July.
