Right now Partners and Affiliates have the ability to give their subscribers 'ad free viewing'. I think subscribers should be able to opt-in to watching ads on a channel their subscribed to even if the channel has 'ad free viewing' turned on for subscribers.
There's not many ways you can have an ad feature that is a win for everyone involved, but I think this is one of those ways.

For Twitch:
- More ads watched on their site.

For Streamers:
- More ad revenue, while also keeping 'ad free viewing' as a perk for those who want to subscribe.

For Viewers:
- More control/choice over the content they're watching. The would be able to toggle ad free viewing on or off depending on if they want to see ads or not.

Some people may wonder why even have this as a feature?
My reason is because right now the streamer only gets ad revenue for ads that are viewed. If you have 'ad free viewing' turned on for subscribers, then none of those viewers will see the ads. If a channel's viewers are made up of mostly subscribers then no ad revenue is being made from an ad break. If anything that ad break is turning away non-subscribers who are the only one's seeing the ads.
Some subscribers may want the ability to support the channel their watching through viewing an ad so the streamer gets that ad revenue. It would be 100% voluntary by the subscriber to toggle on, and give them another way to support Twitch and it's streamers.

So mid-roll ads are going to happen, if we like it or not

How about telling the creator before they happen so that they still have time to do an ad break on their terms?

What if 10min before a mid-roll ad would take place the ad button in the stream manager turns red and displays a 10min countdown. The creator will have 10min to do an ad break on his/her terms - if he/she does, no (additional) mid-roll ad; if he/she doesn’t, play the mid-roll ad after the countdown is over

That way you get what you want which is people watching ads, while creators still get some sort of control over it

The feedback that I have seen about automatic mid-roll ads has been entirely negative, which is not surprising to me at all. No one likes being forced into situations even when it could be good for them.
I've seen lots of posts from streamers saying they don't like the loss of control and viewers saying that you should fix ads for bits, which says to me that the issue is not ads, it is how the ads are being presented.

The entire platform is built around the idea of interactive entertainment, so why are the ads being treated differently?
My suggestion is to give the viewers the controls.

If they have to watch ads, make it transparent how often ads need to be played and give them the option of when to play them so it isn't going to interrupt an important scene.
Make the ads interactive in some way. Enable voting on the sorts of ads that they like/dislike, encourage advertisers to make gamified ads.
Offer incentives for watching the ads. Make ads temporarily unlock exclusive emotes, watch enough ads to get a subscription to a random channel.

The implementation of ads at the moment seems very old, heavy handed and not at all on brand. You should take the parts that people like about Twitch and apply it so that ads become an experience that people can enjoy, not something that they just have to deal with to get to what they actually want.

As a streamer myself I understand that people like their own Twitch page to be theirs to control. A lot of people disable ads on their own channel and a lot will also run them willingly while streaming. Try giving more options we can opt into on our own channels. Without blocking our content at the same time, unless we choose to do so. Here's an idea or so:

• Brb ads
  (We already have, and do get used. Nice example to start)




• Lower thirds
  (Could allow us to set them to pop up as often as we like. Minimum of every X minutes that you (Twitch) can make a pre requisite for signing up.)




• Chatbox ads
  (For me personally, my average chatbox can show roughly 20 messages. Will be different for everyone with resolutions and zoom. We don't NEED to see those messages all the time. We've already read the ones at the top. Add an option where occasionally the top half of the box contains an ad.)




• Ads for channel points
  (I understand that the bit ads actually cost you too. With bits being a real currency. However, channel points are just data. Totally free on your end (I assume). Why not offer people an option to boost channel points with an ad? In fact I'll take this one slightly further. EVERYONE loves emotes. We all strive to unlock as many as we can! If we could make community pools where the viewers work together to hit a goal that could unlock emote slots! This way it costs nobody anything. And we all win. Granted, there are viewers who already have a ton of channel points. This may ruin it. If that's a big issue then make a second set of points. Name them ad points and only allow those to be used.)




• Panel Ads
  (We all have panels below our streams, and yes they don't get seen all too often. But they are there. use them, offer us to have an ad space down there with our other tabs. These are probably my weakest idea but it's worth a shot.)




• Ad timer
  (If you do keep the mid-roll ads, stick a timer on screen a minute in advance. Inform us "Ad running in 0:59", This allows us to prepare for it an advance. Pause our games, move to a intermission screen, whatever it may be. At least this way they don't pop out of nowhere and people miss you getting the final blow on the hard mode boss you've been grinding for over 3 days)

Hope even just 1 of these ideas helps somehow. Good luck!

Right now theres not enough control over how a streamer runs an their stream with the new mid-rolling. However, a feature that can be added is to disable for 20 - 30 minutes mid-rolls for the stream per 30 second ad break and mid and pre-roll per 60 second. That way, a streamer can plan their ad breaks and work around them, especially for competitive games like overwatch, LOL, CSGO, etc. Even for non-competitive games, allowing a streamer the ability to control the flow of the stream by implementing an ad break to avoid mid rolls allows them to build better relationships with viewers.

I understand that this would interfere with the dynamism of an algorithm controlled mid-rolling that would mid-roll different viewers at different times, but if the base product is deeply affected the revenue source will also be deeply affected. And the base product of twitch is the relationship between streamers and viewers.

What I would like to see is people who hold multiple concurrent subscriptions, say 4 or 5 and up, to be allowed to have a site-wide advertisement-free experience.

Currently Turbo is the only option for an ad-free experience site-wide. Prime used to have it, but it was removed as a benefit for Prime (even though Prime costs more). Personally I find Turbo to be very unappealing for its cost, especially when I already have Prime which comes with most of its other perks.

I'd rather spend that money unlocking emotes in other streamer's channels as I feel it makes me more connected to the community of those streamers. I'm sure others may have similar reasons for getting individual subscriptions over Turbo.

I don't see why people with this many, or even a dozen or more subs, have to endure ads on the site when they provide enough money to Twitch as it is. They shouldn't have to make a choice between subscribing to more channels or getting Turbo, in my opinion. Especially with how little the ad revenue helps channels in comparison.

This would also help with subscription numbers for smaller channels, as people will be more willing to subscribe to multiple channels to unlock an ad-free experience, or be putting the money they would otherwise spend on Turbo towards more subscriptions.