Content obtrusive ads are bad for live form content. They work for YouTube and Television where the content can be put on a break until the advertisement is done, however for Twitch the ads will often block important content especially when first joining a stream.

1. Pre-roll ads need to use unobtrusive forms of advertisement. Since pre-roll ads are the only ads forced to run without authorization from the streamer, they are the ads that most likely will directly affect viewing content the streamer does not want you to miss. As a result these ads will discourage viewers from watching, especially when having to click through streamers to see exactly what is going on with their content.

2. The pop out window for the stream when an obtrusive ad is being played is extremely small, having an alternative viewer for this would be greatly appreciated. This could include allowing for use of multiple monitors if available, or an alternative viewer like full screen and theater modes which allow for the ad remain large but give a larger section of screen real estate to the stream as well. These should be optional toggles.

Hello Ad Manager
I am a fine artist, painting in watercolour as LorrainePaints. I am steadily growing my stream thanks to my son Grathwrang. Although Twitch is geared up for gamers (this is obvious) it is an excellent social media site for lots of artists. It is unfortunate that this has not dawned on your management. So I challenge you to find sponsorships that suit the many artists on Twitch. It is extremely costly to buy the tons of supplies necessary to 'perform' on a stream. How about finding someone to help support us, like a major art supplier (Winsor Newton) or someone in California?

No small streamer should have to think about dealing with pre-rolls. It hinders growth and discoverability. It's likely that most small streamers are just starting to figure out how to retain an audience. So having to juggle between bringing new people and keeping those who were already there is an unnecessary job that only brings more anxiety.

Affiliates (or maybe just streamers with less than 10 simultaneous average viewers or so) could have a lighter ad schedule. For example, in order to disable pre-rolls, streamers would need to run 1min30s of ads every hour. That would be a good way for the streamer to get used to taking breaks while it could also be enough of a reminder for the viewers that they are supporting that content creator.

Forced ads on someone trying to find out if that livestream with 3 people watching will be a good place to hang out doesn't help anyone. It generates virtually no income for the streamers, it's a bad experience for the viewers and it has a fraction of the effect the advertisers are looking for. Needless to say, this is not good for Twitch.

The new “auto running ads” is a great start. Now add a countdown alert where the hype train is indicating an upcoming ad & how long it will be. Offer a pop up in chat allowing non-subs an option to click sub to avoid it & subs to click to choose to view it for extra support & offer cool “ad supporter badges” for people that change & get cooler the more ads they watch as a reward for supporting through ads. For more of my ideas please look under the hashtag #bladesideas on Twitter. I’ve already come up with 20+ ideas that Twitch has used & are on the website. Honestly should have been hired by Twitch years ago. Anyway this should solve your ad problem, in my eyes anyway. - InventorBLADES

I don't think this is the correct place to post the bug, but on firefox I have had an issue trying to watch a streamer where you will serve me an ad and then refuse to let the ad play. Thus I am locked out of the stream because it repeatedly serves another ad that doesn't play if I hit refresh. I hear that advertisers prefer their ads to be played too.

I don't think this is the correct spot to be posting this, but when I tried to go through your help section it felt very clunky and all the categories that sounded right didn't have a spot for me to give this feedback.

When on mobile (and sometimes in browser), sometimes you click on a stream, watch the ad and then if you have to minimize the app for whatever reason, or swap between streams, there should be a "cooldown" on the ads for the channel. If I JUST watched the 30 second ad on a channel and accidentally hit the back button or closed the app, I have to re-watch that 30 second ad every time I join the stream again. It would be great to have a cool down on the ad refresh rate, so that it can be easier to watch multiple streams at once, or even to find new streamers to watch.

If you are going to have midrolls you need to provide us tools to work with the midrolls as best we can as creators. Enough people have given you a reason it is a bad idea. I am offering up ideas to make it at least workable if you continue this route.

• We need a countdown on the streamer dash and the mod view on when the next ad will roll. Like a producer would have.
• We need a limited ability to push back an adroll. Like a one time 2 minute snooze button, or a trigger early button.
• We need an API triggered event when an ad runs so that we can use our bots to let us know, so we can wait on what we are doing.
• The ONLY reason I would want this is to eliminate preroll ads. If you aren't eliminating preroll just don't bother.

Streamers now have a Pre-Rolls Off Timer in the creator dashboard. This is a very nice feature, since they can see how much time is left, and they can keep the time up by doing short ads, opposed to doing 180s every hour. However, how are channel Editors supposed to know how much time is left on Pre-Rolls being disabled? They can't. The only way for us to know they're disabled is to torture our non-subs with 180s of ads every hour. 180s of ads is horrible though, and people leave.
It would be a great help to the site, if Editors could view this timer as well, so we can run short ads when it's at a good time, say if the streamer has to leave for the bathroom or a phone call, rather than forcing the 180s when my 1h alarm goes off.
Please Twitch, I'm tried of torturing the non-subs

Most of the streamers I watch usually play on the same roleplay server, and my average viewing session consists of constantly changing channels to see the roleplay from another perspective. Pre-roll ads are the biggest annoyance for me. Every single time I swap to a new channel I'm forced to sit through the same **** 30 second ad, and miss a large portion of whatever reason I was swapping perspectives. Random mid-roll ads can be just as bad, causing me to miss entertaining spontaneous situations.

I hate ads, but if ads are absolutely necessary at least leave it to the streamer to choose when to roll them so it doesn't interrupt the content.