This Future of TV Briefing covers the latest in streaming and TV for Digiday+ members and is distributed over email every Wednesday at 10 a.m. ET. More from the series →This week’s Future of TV Briefing looks at how TV and streaming companies’ advertising businesses fared in the second quarter of 2026.
Time to check in on the ad market’s swing from traditional TV to streaming. Based on TV and streaming companies’ latest quarterly earnings report, the gap continues to close, though the chasm is still significant and the outlook isn’t entirely rosy (unless you’re an ad buyer).
Take Disney for example.
Not only did the parent company of Disney+ and Hulu see its streaming ad revenue increase by 3% in its most recent quarter, but that streaming ad revenue represented more than half of the $1.6 billion in total ad revenue from Disney’s overall entertainment segment. In other words, Disney’s entertainment advertising business has become primarily streaming. That’s a big deal.
But then there’s Disney’s sports business. This segment includes ESPN and is reported as a separate segment that raked in $1.2 billion in advertising revenue. Disney doesn’t break out streaming’s share of sports advertising revenue, but TV owners primarily run the same ads on streaming as on traditional TV when it comes to their sports inventory. So it seems safe to say that streaming represents less than half — but at least 30% — of Disney’s $2.8 billion in total ad revenue for the quarter.
