Remove mid-roll ads
Cancel the testing of mid-roll ads on affiliate and partner channels. Your viewer base doesn't want this and creators don't want ads playing out of their control interrupting their content
As we announced on Twitter earlier, we have concluded the mid-rolls experiment. Thank you all for your comments and the incredible momentum you’ve contributed to this topic.
There have been many great suggestions, both in this thread and in the Ads forum that we have taken back to the team for consideration. It’s important to know that ads are essential to the future of Twitch, however we want to make things as painless as possible. Please still upvote, share, comment, and create new ideas in this forum so that we may continue to benefit from all of your passionate influence.
Announcement: https://twitter.com/TwitchSupport/status/1306709495196852225?s=20
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ZephyrFloofyDerg commented
This is a really big mis-step. Ads are the one thing that puts off most people from watching a channel. It does not help audience retention at all.
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cozyKoakuma commented
Just sharing a few thoughts why I think of this as a bad idea:
1) It encourages people to use adblockers again and therefore decrease ad income
2) Content creators, except for the biggest ones, hardly profit from ads
3) Small content creators are at disadvantage. People may be willing to accept an ad during their favorite streamers stream, but may just leave if it happens in streams of lesser known content creators.
4) The focus on the biggest content creators (which is a shift this mid-ad-roll will amplify) may lead to a lack of newcomers eventually -
rucksacksep commented
why does noone watch TV anymore? because of the ads during the film.
that's why you watch Netflix or watch some ads infront of a stream, to enjoy the rest without any ads.And on Live-Content it may ruin the streams of many streamers.
Imagine taking a random ad break during the second half of a football match ... makes sense... -
Regalus27 commented
Uncontrollable mid-rolls are a horrendous idea. 1: Removes control of content from the content creator. 2: Esports. Hard to justify tuning in when a mid-roll pops up in the middle of the climax of a match. Hard to get sponsors when a mid-roll might just hide your sponsorship ad. 3: This is just a scummy money grab, both in ads, and forcing viewers to subscribe to anything they want to watch, depending on how aggressive the algorithm is for mid-rolls.
I mean, good for making money, at the cost of the goodwill of viewers and creators.
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HippoTheLegend commented
Running forced ads that the creator has no control over is an incredibly bad idea. This will make it so that viewers might miss out on the most hype moment in the stream. Just imagine a forced ad running right at the deciding moment of the grand finals of an Esports tournament. This will ruin the viewing experience which will in turn effect your bottom line.
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bic_mag commented
TWITCH, as a general rule of thumb:
If the content creator can't control what's happening when on their channel, it's probably a bad idea. -
BlazingPhoenix commented
I completely agree with this. Ads can appear at the worst possible moments if they are automated. It's bad enough when someone has to refresh a stream because the stream freezes or for other issues, especially if they've just had an ad.
"Why don't you just subscribe?" isn't an option, as normal viewers who don't have the neccessary funds or Twitch Prime will be inconvenienced by mid-roll ads even if they've recently had one, and will turn away. A conversation can be going on and if a random ad was to play, then what the streamer had said for up to 30 seconds will need to be repeated, and some don't like repeating themselves.
So, leave the mid-roll ads to YouTube, and only play ads when someone comes into the stream. And leave mid-rolls up to the streamer themselves, it's not up to Twitch to lessen the experience of the viewers. IN FACT, let the streamer themselves decide whether or not they want ads on their streams at all.
Also an issue, ads on VODs, they're annoying because they're not live, where most of the viewership comes from.
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Tasty_DE commented
Don't do this
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Diatrek commented
this idea is stupid and all it does is forces people to blacklist twitch again on the adblock
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DrSnuupy commented
This really annoys the majority of your viewer base
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Mystirial commented
pls Remove it, no one need it
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Duffwuff commented
Bounce rate is high enough with pre-roll ads, sitting around 30%. That means approximately 3 out of every 10 new viewers visiting a channel will leave when they're forced to sit through an ad even before getting to watch the streamer. Adding involuntary mid-rolls would be catastrophically worse for small channels, as new viewers would likely leave when they are suddenly and inexplicably fed an ad in the MIDDLE of the stream. Viewers will be further incentivised to stick to their subscribed channels, and avoid new channels.
I have no doubt in my mind that this decision is a wholly corporate one, centered around greed, squeezing every penny out of the platform they can. Streamers will be forced to run regular ad breaks in order to combat this new tactic, or ads will be run FOR them at inopportune times, BOTH OF WHICH will drive viewers away.
Honestly? Get rid of all ads. They're invasive, they're disruptive, they're annoying, and they're a cheap money-grabbing tactic. You wanna make more money, Twitch? That's fine. But come up with more unique ways to monetize the platform. Stand out as "The Ad-Free Streaming Platform" and give your viewers unique, fun ways to both support their favorite streams, and give Twitch their money. Besides, you're not exactly hurting for cash. You're owned by AMAZON for Pete's sake, it's not like Twitch is a small start-up. Quit ruining the streaming and viewing experience just to line your pockets.
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sanxqa commented
Worst idea ever...
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mrfreezzzzzz commented
i've stopped watching tv, and most especially my favourite channels, not because it got boring, bad, or anything of that sort, but simply because i couldn't stand the ads anymore.
on a long term this is exactly what you're going to achieve. because we all know where this is heading to: today it's one ad, mid-roll but it won't take long before there's a second one... then a third and so and so forth till we end up with one ad every 15 minutes. even if you swear today it's never going to happen, we know marketers are liars.
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RhapsodyPlays commented
In addition to every other point mentioned so far, if this idea is meant to drive ad revenue it is seriously short-sighted. As ads get more intrusive, more users will install ad blockers to avoid them. Streamers may even *recommend* ad blocking to avoid automatic mid-rolls interrupting the show.
Your site thrives off of the culture and good will of your user base, which you seem intent to destroy for the sake of short-term profit. You take half of each sub, give a vanishingly small CPM, implemented your own donation system in bits to skim off of the top of, and are owned by a man whose net worth eclipses entire NATIONS. This is greed, pure and simple. Be better.
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K3ndo commented
Whatever you do, you definitely WON‘T improve it by randomly activate ads without having ANY control over it. You had bad ideas in the past, but THIS IS THE WORST of all time.
You take ALL of your advantages you had against YouTube AND television and throw it into the bin.
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NicoTheDane commented
to be honest twitch even more ads bad idea there are already way to many ads, example when i and most streamers want to raid / host someone when we see that they have lets say 3 ads going we will by default find someone els to raid/host lets say this automated mid-roll ads puts 5 or 6 ads that we have to watch 99% of all streamers and viewers will not watch that many and they leave right away, experience when either i or people i watch host or raid someone everytime we see 2 - 3 ads in que we will fine someone els witch sucks for that streamer we do know that the stream will be muted and the stream will continue to play in a smaller window on the page yes its an good idea to make twitch money but very very bad for us that stream this will NOT benefit us that stream at all, as i said 99% of all streamers and viewers when they see alot of ads in que they leave and find someone els this would only hurt us
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8charon8 commented
Imagine this for example:
A streamer is playing a story focused game. A very important cutscene appears, which cannot be paused or replayed. Now, some viewers are unable to see this cutscene because an ad appears.What should this streamer do?
Quit, reload, and play 2 hours again, so everyone has only a new chance to see the full cutscene?
Accept this, so he will loose viewers, who don't accept to keep watching, before they have seen this important content they missed?
Switch to another streaming platform?The same goes for any type of content, not only games. Even if the streamer is just chatting, there will always be someone who missed something important because of an random ad, so the streamer has to repeat everything over and over again.
Twitch needs to fix this problem immediately! It is unacceptable to conceal important story content or dialogues using randomly appearing ads.
At minimum, the streamer should know the time the ad will appear, so he can pause beforehand. -
MacND commented
This feature is an ill-advised, content ruining mess obviously developed solely to further line Twitch's pockets. Most, if not all, streamers want control over pre-rolls because they want to improve their viewers experience, never mind further implementations of things they can't control. How can you justify to any streamer the running of ads outside of their control that could cause viewers to miss important moments? Twitch's CPM is already far below the industry standard and you take half of every single sub.
I don't even stream on the platform for the money, so I cannot imagine the stress this is causing the people who have entrusted their revenue to your platform. I look forward to cancelling my affiliate contract if you continue to aimlessly press on with this nonesense.
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TheLegendOfMart commented
You remove ad-free from Prime then start forcing ads on peoples channels who clearly don't want it.
The more you force the issue the more people will use adblock.
I watch several streamers and can't afford to sub to them all so ***** me right?