Everyone hates adverts. You can’t turn on the television, get on a bus, walk through town, or go online without being pelted by the damn things. Sometimes, you’ll be eating food, and the packaging for that food will be advertising different food to you, either with discounts or flashy branding pointing you to a limited time item. Even right now, as you scroll through your favourite games website, you’re having to read ads. That last one is important, because those ads pay my salary. That’s true of most writers on the internet these days, although ads also pay the salaries – or at least a portion of the salaries – of many people working in online industries. Few of these, however, have as tumultuous a relationship with advertising as Twitch streamers, which is why the platform’s new advert initiative is such a breath of fresh air.
Twitch is beginning ‘Stream Display Ads’, which are adverts that play while the streamer and their content is still visible on the screen, but do so in a far less disruptive manner. Adverts on Twitch are typically like the ones you get on YouTube – you click whatever it is you want to watch, then you need to sit through an advert before the clip begins. Then, if the clip goes on long enough, you’ll be interrupted mid-way through by another advert, and yet another one at the end. Twitch’s new model will be more like the adverts on the site you’re reading this on – in theory, a little less intrusive.
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Right now, you can see an advert. I’m not sure if it will be below this paragraph, above it, or below the next paragraph down, but it will be there. I don’t know how useful it will be to you, but I do know that you’ll be able to read these words and see the advert at the same time. Twitch’s new scheme works in the same way – a banner ad will appear under the streamer like a chyron. It will show, linger for ten seconds, then disappear. Streamers can choose to opt in or opt out of the scheme, and they will still receive ad revenue for using Stream Display Ads.
Usually there’s a catch for this, but there doesn’t seem to be one here. The ads can’t be minimised or closed, but then, they don’t actually block any of the screen, they just shrink it slightly. Also, they won’t be used too often – between three to eight ads will play every hour, meaning at max you’re losing one minute 20 seconds to them. Plus, you aren’t really losing it – you’ll be on screen the whole time. Right now, the revenue rate will be identical to the old ad system too. If that changes in the future, that could be an issue, but for the rollout at least, things are running smoothly.
Everyone hates adverts, and there are probably too many of them in the world, but many of your favourite streamers owe their success, in part, to ads. The likes of Ninja and Pokimane earn enough from merchandise, sponsorships, and subs to make an incredibly healthy living through online streaming, but when you’re starting out, you’re not getting deals with Red Bull. Smaller streamers need ad revenue to get off the ground. But audiences are fickle, especially for up and coming streamers who lack the time commitment, experience, production value, and crowd of a Pokimane. If an ad pops up while you’re watching a small streamer, maybe you don’t stick around until it’s over. With Stream Display Ads, that’s no longer an issue.
There are two main reasons to hate advertising. One is how disruptive it is. The second is the way it underlines the rampant capitalism of our society, reinforces our most materialistic urges, and turns everything into a commodity. There’s not really much we can do about the latter except overthrow the system, but before we do that, Twitch’s new advertising model seems to fix the biggest problems with the former.
It won’t fix all of Twitch’s issues, of course. This year, we’ve had a hot tub meta, a fart meta, and a gambling meta. The first reminded us all of the misogynistic leanings of some of Twitch’s audience, supported implicitly by major names like xQc dunking on hot tub streamers for clout. Meanwhile, Amouranth and IndieFoxx, the engineers of the fart meta, baited Twitch into banning them, then used the bans to promote their OnlyFans pages. Theres’s nothing wrong with sex work, but there is an issue with using a platform populated by minors to build parasocial relationships in order to support and promote said sex work. The gambling meta, meanwhile, where streamers like Adin Ross are paid $2 million a month to promote gambling heavy games to an impressionable audience, is the grossest of the lot.
All this, and Twitch is still ruled by DMCA strikes. A recent initiative to use the Spotify plugin to get around issues is a positive step, but it’s not without its own issues, and is a step that should have been made by Twitch itself, not a user trying to MacGyver a fix.
Still, Stream Display Ads are a notable step in the right direction. If Twitch can successfully make ads less intrusive for users while still allowing streamers to benefit financially, this small tweak could be one of the platform’s most effective in years.
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