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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ju1ce_pouch commented
If you thought people would be okay with autonomous mid-roll ads, you have absolutely no understanding of your own platform. Did you take five seconds to think about music streams? Speedruns? Podcast recordings? This is a uniquely horrible idea. The entire point of a stream is that it's uninterrupted. If a streamer chooses to take a break and play an ad, that's fine. If the platform forces it during the action, that is, again, a fundamental misunderstanding of your own platform. If you continue to try to monetize this way, it's going to continue driving people away from Twitch. Figure it out.
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Weirdman3214 commented
For the sake of every streamer on the platform, you need to not have random mid-roll ads. For a smaller streamer like myself who has very few people watching, an ad in the middle of my content could cause the limited back and forth I have with my handful of viewers almost impossible. Not only that, but it would actively hurt my channel growth, as viewers are likely to leave if there is an ad in the middle of an important moment and they end up missing it.
This can and will ruin a viewer's experience, regardless of the type of content. Long-form shows like D&D games are built around a single, connected story for the whole stream; an ad in the middle of an important discussion can ruin that story. The same is true for long games like RPGs. For shorter games, a moment of intense hype that would likely cause people to drop bits, donate, or sub will be cut off and the excitement vanish before any money is spent (which is what you actually care about). Many people will decide to use an adblocker instead of subbing to avoid the ads; many already do and that's just for the pre-roll ads and the ones the streamer actively plays. That will result in a loss of ad revenue for all parties.
Quite frankly, the idea of mid-roll ads that the streamer has no control over is asinine. There's already an option for playing ads mid-stream, and taking power away from your creators is going to cause more harm than good. In fact, it will only cause harm. I know there are a lot of people who have ideas on how to fix this terrible mistake of a system. Listen to them and do better.
Or just get rid of ads altogether because you really don't need them, that's also an option.
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Atrayus30 commented
Worst stupid idea ever why would you want to **** people off even more and saturate advertising that only angers people so you get more pennys on a dollar for next to nothing in revenue? no i dont want veiwers i appreciate or our community when im trying to help them and a **** add i didnt want up cuts me or anyone off. Now think about it there is 90% a negative to this. This accualy upsets me to think its and idea.
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TheRealAngelFox commented
Definitely not appropriate.
Especially for mental health and LGBTQIA+ plus streamers if they are right in the middle of advising someone where to get help.Do something like Loots if you want to put periodic ads up.
But realistically this is totally impractical for all streamers.
Ad blockers WILL be more prolific.
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A_German_spy commented
This policy not only provides no meaningful benefit to small channels like mine, but it makes the viewer experience significantly worse by interrupting discussions and crucial moments of action. Furthermore I earn virtually no ad revenue, and all this policy accomplishes is giving my viewers even more reason to employ ad-blockers (as well as giving me even less reason to discourage them from doing so).
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MattM33 commented
Completely unneeded especially in the ASMR category
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Joshuacaleb75 commented
Auto-mid roll ads during a live stream IS THE ANTITHESIS OF A LIVE STREAM!!
I'm watching a live stream and right during a cool gameplay moment or an hilarious streamer reaction and suddenly CUT TO 20 SEC AD!! So here I am watching an ad for a stupid car or a new Star Trek show while the rest of chat is blowing up over a really cool moment. I'm suddenly disengaged with the stream since I can't react with everyone else. Viewers shouldn't be expected to subscribe to EVERY SINGLE STREAMER they follow just so that they can engage with chat. Auto mid-roll ads is basically one step away from requiring all streams to be subscriber-only chat. -
AkaiKaibutsu commented
https://help.twitch.tv/s/article/ad-experience-experiment
Revert this, it breaks creator content control.
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Tinkuwu commented
We don't want this ****, Twitch. Take off Mid-roll ads permanently, Jeff Bezos can live without his two extra cents per person streaming.
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ShinyAvarice commented
Get rid of it. Jeff Bezos is worth $200B. Get the money from him
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Orphal commented
This is BAD. Pre-roll is already borderline, but here you may be running an ad at the WORST moment possible, i.e. a decisive action on stream.
Picture-in-Picture is NOT an acceptable compromise: it's so small that for MANY games, such a small window won't allow the viewer to see what's going on.
Plus the viewer may think the streamer launched the ad. We can already see people screaming in chat when there's 1x 30s ad run too many when the live restarted and viewers are getting ads on top.
Leave ads during the stream to the Creators. THEY will know when best to run an ad that's not TOO intrusive.
What you're doing here is just pushing people to turn on adblock. It's already hard enough to get people to turn it off, don't make it even harder. You'll be shooting yourself AND the Creator in the foot.
Ads are an important part of the business model. But alienating the entire community with this kind of stuff is BAD. It's crucial to have a good balance between enough ads and not too many, so that it's tolerable and viewers accept to turn off adblock to support the Creator (and therefore, Twitch too). Tip the balance too much either way, far less revenues are generated.
Come on Twitch. Don't be the money-grabbing bad guy here. Support your community of viewers and Creators. This is not the way.
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ZombieLove commented
Forcing mid roll ads on viewers is going to run viewers off the platform. One of your largest categories is ASMR. Mid roll ads will run ASMR viewers to a different platform where they do not have to deal with ads in the middle of their ASMR experience. It is extremely important that ASMR streamers have control over when the ads are played. If you continue with forced mid roll ads it is going to destroy the ASMR category. You will not only lose ASMR viewers, but your ASMR streamers will leave to platforms where viewers can enjoy their ASMR peacefully.
If you want more ads to be played by streamers you can make it so ads actually are worth while for streamers to play. Currently it is not financially worthwhile to play ads in the middle of a stream. When streamers do run ads in the middle it causes viewers to leave, and that means potential financial support leaves. If streamers made a fair amount from ads, they would play them more. Viewers would want to stay through ads if they knew it actually was supporting the streamer.
Forcing mid roll ads on viewers is absolutely not the right idea. It is going to cause Twitch to lose viewers, streamers and money.
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ArakATK commented
As both a user and a content creator, no. If I have control over this, then I can run it when it makes sense. While I'm taking a break. Getting water. etc. If you run it whenever you like it might happen during a giveaway, or while people are proposing on my stream. No. All my no. I am begging you please do not do this. As a small streamer, I will never be able to garner an audience if you keep adblocking my content every 30 mins. And please don't try to phrase it like it's for us. the 0.03 I get annually from ads is not worth the nosedive my viewership is going to take.
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sparkletatas commented
100% this, many streamers want to give even the non subs the full experience, mid rolls for example during a really intense boss battle or reaction worthy scene would make the experience for the viewer really bad. One of the worst ideas I have heard from twitch if the option is not triggerable.
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gravy1333 commented
Some streams rely on audio to know whats going on. For example D&D stream for the most part are purely audio and this would ruin that type of stream.
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dougdougdougiedoug commented
Enough with the mid roll ads every 10 mins. 7 of the same ads over and over is killing content
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KaervekFC commented
Overall this idea of Automated Mid-Roll adverts is an insanely bad idea.
Yes it can be financially beneficial to the large streamers as they can potentially get an injection of advert revenue through no work of their own. But the effect this will have on the viewing experience is massive.
Already we are seeing viewers globally move away from platforms like normal TV in favour of streaming services like Netflix, etc, as one of the major benefits is getting away from adverts.
The general feedback online about Youtube recent policy of adding more adverts to videos, in particular the mid clip double unskippable adverts, is awful and is causing people to avoid the platform.
Twitch already has mid-roll adverts on VODs, which I've noticed still run even when subscribed to the streamer, which for me is a major reason why I don't watch VODs even though I would love nothing more than to catch up on content I've missed.
Twitch, I understand that this idea of automated mid-roll adverts is to increase revenue, and it's poor that you describe it as revenue for the streamer, because EVERYONE knows that the true beneficiaries of this is Twitch itself. If you are truly looking to increase your revenue Twitch, then there are better ways to do it, the first being is to provide an environment that draws viewers in and makes it more inviting to subscribe to Turbo or individual streamers, not introduce policies that makes viewers start wanting to support other streaming platforms. The more people you attract, the more subs, the more subs the more income. Adverts drive people away, so sure, it will give you an injection of cash now, but what will you do when it drives millions of viewers elsewhere?
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pokerbrahs commented
If the content creator DOES NOT want to run ads then don't force us to. Always give us an option to turn it OFF!
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TouchOfOblivion commented
You didn't give us an opt-out option. You didn't ask ANY creators if we even wanted this. We get paid pennies for every ad so frankly I don't want your paltry 10 cents if it's going to cost me viewers. Do you have ANY idea what it's like for creators who deal with ads? We lose people because people want ENTERTAINMENT not a commercial. They can go watch Hulu and YouTube for ads. This isn't going to help anyone. Scratch that, it helps your pocket books. This will do nothing but harm your creators, especially people who rely on it for income and aren't making a **** ton of money off it already.
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Rhaco_Dactylus commented
Stop being greedy. I know that part of your calculus is that mid-roll ads might encourage more people to subscribe or buy turbo, which will net you even more money, but the reality is that mid-roll ads will discourage exploration around twitch. People will be more likely to stay in the few channels they're already subscribed to instead of voluntarily exposing themselves to new content that they might later want to subscribe to. Intrusive ads, which is what you're proposing to start forcing on people, is sacrificing the long-term stability of the platform for a short-term and mediocre gain. Twitch, and its parent company Amazon, are not at all hurting for money. Stop being greedy and maybe put content creators and viewers first, for a change.