I love the idea for supporting streamers with bits but frankly I don't have the money to spend on bits, so that's why I rely on the free bits from ads, but one time after watching an ad it says "Try again later" under the Watch Ad button. At first I thought "Ok. I'll just watch more tomorrow" but it still said "Try again later" and it has been like that for months so I gave up checking at this point. If you could fix this or at least ease on the time you need to wait between ads. Maybe like one or two ads a week and these ads can stack, (for example if I don't watch my two ads for one week I can watch 4 ads next week and if I don't watch those 4 ads, next week I can watch 6 ads, and so on.)
Of course the "two ads per week" is just yet another suggestion, you can tailor it to however you feel fit. I just at least want a way of knowing "Hey! I watched all my ads. I can wait until _______ to watch another one." instead of relying on what feels like random luck to watch another ad.

In the middle of watching someone's exciting steam, an ad pops up covering the entire video while chat continues. Chat is then going crazy because something awesome just happened, yet we were unable to see it because an ad was covering the video stream. What a disappointment.

Make the ad go into a corner with sound or something, but please do not block the whole image. That's the reason why we are here, to watch the steamers. You want the ads for monetary gain, fine, but find a happy medium where you don't disappoint your customers. Badly placed ads drive more people away than keeps them.

Since this change I've been driven further and further away from Twitch.tv as a platform. I find it ridiculous that the only way to not have to see this annoying Ad spam is by using my ONE prime sub or just not watching content on Twitch.tv. There is a major problem with that approach, and until something changes (and I'm certain thousands of others would agree here), I will no longer be using this platform for my viewing pleasure.I hope you guys get this figured out and find a better solution soon, like putting the Ads responsibility back on individual streamers, since that empowers THEM to generate revenue for themselves, as opposed to the obviously fake cop-out of "this ad supports -insert random streamer here- " since that just seems so disingenuous.

After having read your new feature that allows streamers to disable Pre-Rolls by playing enough ads (30 seconds = 10 minutes), I think you've missed the mark slightly.

I DO think it's a good idea to disable the pre-roll for people discovering new content. As such, I believe a better implementation of the no preroll idea is the following:

• No pre-roll for users the FIRST time they join your stream BUT a forced 30 second 10 minutes into the stream if they stay.

This solves two problems. First, it solves the problem of discouraging people from discovering new content. You have clearly identified an issue with pre-rolls in how it impacts new viewers and presented the current solution. Second, it solves the financial issue by running the ad they would have seen in the pre-roll. It's the best of ALL worlds.

I have no problem with ads usually and I understand why they're there, but it seems that a new feature rolled out that makes it so that an ad plays every 20 minutes when you're watching a vod.

I find this really annoying, as the ads are usually about 100% more loud than the vod so every 20 minutes I need to stop whatever I'm doing and turn down the volume on my computer (since I can't change the volume of the ad, which is not great either btw) and wait for the ad to finish so I can turn the volume back up.

Even if tedious, I'd be ok with this if it happened like every hour or so instead of 20 minutes. So... pretty please?

Overall, ads on Twitch are reasonable and not too intrusive, but this one quirk makes it more difficult for small streamers to support each other.

If someone ends their stream by hosting mine, I would like to be able to thank them and welcome them and any viewers who came along with them. But at the moment that I receive the host notification, I have to assume that none of them can see me because an ad just started playing for them. And if I host another streamer at the conclusion of my stream, my viewers and I don't get to see their reaction unless without pre-loading their stream, or watching the VOD later, or enabling an adblocker.

Revenue from host-transition ads must be next to nothing, and this does not seem like something that is done to nudge people towards paying for Turbo because the hosted streamer obviously cannot assume that most of the viewers coming over to their channel have Turbo.

Most of ads should be skippable. Your site is a live streaming platform, you cannot force people to watch ads while they were watching something else that they will completely miss because of ads. Same concept goes for the first AD you are forced to watch as soon as you open one live stream. If im forced to watch something without any possibility to skip unless i close the whole page, i will 100% start hating on the promoted product just beause it is disturbing my plans.
Also giving people the possibility to spam as many ads as they want, looks like a streamer paradise, right, but it became fkn hell for others not streaming and just watching. There are more ads on twitch now than in tv. At this moment, twitch is comparable to any illegal movie streaming platform where they spam 100 ads per second to earn the most possible income. Legit feels the same.
Also. Why do you think youtube lets people ADBLOCK ads, instead of adopting a different system like you are doing here? (yep, ads are impossible to block on twitch)
Because someone just dont want to watch ads end of the story. Not even 1. By forcing people to watch ads no matter what (unless you pay of course) you are willingly pushing a decent slice of audience away from this site, since they just dont have a chance to navigate ads-free.
It might look like a smart idea in short terms since everyone now is obligated to watch the same amount of ads, still, on a long run, you will scare away a decent slice of people just because of this issue.
Remove your stupid in-stream impossible-to-block abusive unskippable ads.
PS. i had to watch the omen desktop ads at least 500 times in the past 2 weeks. I never meant to buy that crap and i never will, so, exactly, how is it effective in any way to keep spamming that sht to me since im obviously not interested, i wonder.
Also, promoters will soon understand how uneffective it actually is to promote stuff here, because of what i just explained, and you will eventually scare away advertisers too.
Also i basically stopped exploring rooms, because now i have to watch a damn AD everytime i close a stream to open another one. It got so boring that i basically stopped searching for rooms and im always watching the same people just to avoid the system triggering new ads.
Was anyone even thinking to all this issues, when you added this ads-system on twitch?
I honestly dont think so.
This is a gigantic mess.

Automatic mid-roll ads would be much better for the streamer and viewers if there's ads that doesn't interrupt the stream audio content totally, instead just taking most of the screen to display the product/service advertised, with the stream visual being shown in the picture-in-picture. Leaving it as an option (if mid-roll ads have sounds or not) to the streamer would be the best so you could know what the creators want to have on their stream. I know silent ads usually doesn't pays as much as full video ads with sounds, but having less intrusive ads would allow you to play more ads before it's too much for the viewers and have them quit/use an ad blocker.

Dear Twitch,

I think I speak for most of the streaming community when I say we do NOT like your new mid-roll strategy. Ads are among the biggest annoyances on the site and the solution is not to give us more ads. Here are some ideas on making ads on Twitch better for both the creator and the viewer.

1. Give the creators an actual cut of the ad revenue
   Right now, this is absolutely peanuts when you compare it to other video content sites, it’s actually insane. This would make running ads also a bit more attractive for creators and viewers will know that these ads would actually support their favourite creators a lot more than now.




2. Make your ads shorter and skippable
   The ads that are currently running on Twitch are often way too long. Myself and other viewers have often skipped these ads by simply going to a different channel, that is not okay. That should not happen.




3. Consider adding closable lower third ads
   When you first launch a stream you can have a lower third ad hovering over the videoplayer. Be sure to make it so that viewers can click these away.




4. Let creators and viewers (individually) control mid-rolls
   I really like the fact that as a creator you can roll an ad, for instance, when you need to take a snack break or toilet break. What if we add a feature like that for every viewer. Let’s say you have a button somewhere next to the stream that viewers can opt for an ad to support their favourite creators, this way both the creator and the viewer has more control over when they want to see ads.




5. Bits for ads
   Why is this not a thing worldwide? This is such a nice concept and should be implemented all over the world because it gives the chance for viewers that can’t afford a sub or bits to give bits anyway by just saving them up by watching ads here and there. This can go hand in hand with the ad button for viewers.




6. A certain amount of paid subs (gift subs excluded) = Twitch Turbo
   Lastly, make it so that viewers that have a certain amount of paid subscriptions across multiple channels have Twitch Turbo perks. However, they could still opt to see ads to support a streamer with the button and still see mid-rolls from the streamer.

In summary, I think there is a lot to learn from other platforms in regards to ads on Twitch. These are just some loose ideas, I’m sure there are plenty of people that have better ideas than me or that can make these ideas even better. Thank you for reading and hopefully, maybe, something will be done with this.

Special shoutout to @HarrisHeller and @Jasper55RL (both on Twitter) for providing some of the points talked about in this post.