If they could let someone watch like 3 to 5 minutes, they could likely increase engagement.
I've actually stopped trying to look for new streamers to watch because of it.
Either ~3 minutes of ads per hour, or an up-front 30s of ads before you can view the stream.
You would only see >1 minute of ads if they choose the first option and you hit the stream on the ad break.
But I agree with you. I've bounced from many-a-stream due to up-front ads.
All things considered though, I think you are right that the option that forces it at the beginning of the stream is obnoxious and affects the interest of those intending to stream. There's likely a better way (similar to your suggestion) that gets people involved in the stream first.
I don't typically mind the ads for streamers who run them between games or set aside an ad break. However if a streamer doesn't manually run the ads live streams never really have a good spot for them to automatically run. Such a double edged sword.
Since it's live, it isn't like the video will just pick back up where you were. I realize ads could still play during, but if we could make it only in the beginning (or the streamer could say, I am taking a break and trigger an ad, that would be better.
if you have someone you WANT to watch, 60s isn't a big deal at the beginning. If you're a new viewer and the first thing you see when you visit a stream is 60s for ads, when you don't even know if you'd like the streamer, your bounce rate is going to be very high. It really limits discoverability.
It seems like they’re using it to incentivize streamers to run more ads so they’ll get better retention by turning off pre roll.
The key point is platforms are fully aware of what they are doing and understand that this will drive users away but that is the point. If you can't fire enough people, sell enough ads or reduce enough product maintenance in your business then the next step is to fire your end users.
There might be a correlation with the economy, where they need to triple down on the enshitification but it could be cultural, "the other managers did this shit and they bought soem cool sports car, I am better then them I will buy 2 cars"
There was a months-long period where 95% of the ads I saw were one of two different Audible ads, endlessly repeating, and those were a case of Amazon buying ads from itself since apparently nobody else was buying.
Amazon is starting to get more serious about selling ads though (Prime Video ads), but Google/Meta have had such a headstart I don't think they will catch up.
Like some more AAA garbage and such.
I mean sure if you had 100 streamers playing chess it might make sense to have a dedicated ad sales team doing targeted ads for chess fans. But if you've got like 4 chess streamers at any given time? Easier to just give them ads for gamers.
The type of user they have is more likely to use adblockers than, let's say, most YouTube users. That's probably why.
Twitch is impossible to watch with ads.
I really don't get the extreme amount of effort people put into adblocking for services that have a paid alternative. People have this expectation of all these internet services being free which is wild to me. It costs an enormous amount of bandwidth to run Twitch.
It is still not profitable because it's such a hard business model to run and yet people think they shouldn't have to pay anything for it, even when they use the service for dozens to hundreds of hours a month.
Avid twitch users are generally already spending considerably more than $10 a month with subscriptions to multiple streamers, gifted subscriptions, bits, etc.
We could have a decentralized and open medium for global information exchange. Instead, the web is a cesspool, and a large part of why is because we've commercialized everything.
10 USD is too much to charge for ad free twitch. I don't WANT to support twitch, their reputation and brand isn't stellar.
They're probably one of the least awful, but I have better places to spend my money. Like the content creators on twitch. I begrudgingly pay twitch to support the streamers I watch and care about. but 10$ so streamers can get none of that... pass, if I care about the streamer, I'll unmute the small window, if I don't I'll close twitch.
Until adtech companies start acting more ethically as a rule. They deserve no consideration. Bad behavior might not excuse bad behavior, but it obviously encourages it.
You aren't.
Twitch Turbo costs $12/month. If you're spending more than that on multiple subscriptions then you're better off getting Twitch Turbo and not getting ads on any stream, rather than just those you subscribe to.
What if you believe that ads are even unacceptable once if you watch twitch rarely?
First it’s pay, no ads. Then it’s higher tier for no ads. Then it’s higher tier no ads but watch a trailer at the beginning. Then it’s higher tier and ads.
I'll happily pay for things like LWN, though, even though I'd get everything ad-free two weeks later anyhow.
Setting up a proxy for ad filtering is a one-time investment I can share with my friends that feel the same.
if the ad-free subscription is bundled with Prime, def worth it.
No such option exists
I feel like that was close enough for their point to stand
What that target audience have in common... tons on times and low to zero income, so since they have time to spend trying to not pay because they don't have money to begin with, then it will happen.
Twitch is betting on having a "YouTube moment", when those teens and young adults become adults with real money, they would love to avoid the hassle of going ad-free for 10 bucks a month because they love the content that is there, so for them would be at max 1 hour of their total income, meanwhile it has to stuck taking the loses till that moment happen.
Funny how that $3/month was just enough for me to decide it was no longer worth it.
If Discord can offer me a Nitro and Nitro Basic, where the Basic plan pretty much has all the features I need for less than half the price 2.99 vs 9.99, so can they offer me a plan for just ad blocking, which is the main feature people want in the first place, either that, or they offer me something else that justifies me having to pay a premium for something I can get for free.
Not to mention that like many other people, I'm already indirectly supporting them through other means such as donations to specific streamers which they take a high cut of.
TL:DR: $12 is a lot of money for what they offer when I already support the people I watch and they siphon from that.
There is Twitch Turbo but it's 3x more expensive than Youtube Premium and doesn't really have any special benefits. But hey Bezos might need a new yacht so guess the price is justified.
I also appreciate that Twitch still displays the stream while ads play.
The only reliable solution I found is to VPN to some non-western country where they typically don't have advertisers. Of course, this brings a load of other issues :`).
I've been looking for another platform, considered youtube but it has much of the same issues. Maybe I'll go to tiktok.
TikTok is probably the worst one to make money from adverts.
