Twitch plans to take a much-needed look at how easy it is to find a streamer you like without having to survive annoying pre-roll ads before you can watch anything.
In a open letter (opens in new tab) on Twitch’s outlook for 2023, chief product officer Tom Verrilli and chief monetization officer Mike Minton detailed all the features and changes it plans to introduce.
Currently, Twitch streamers are required to run a certain number of midstream ads to disable the pre-roll ads that appear when you click on their channel. If they show a long 90-second ad, they can earn 30 minutes of time without pre-roll ads, which is a common barrier to attracting new viewers.
Twitch plans to simplify that requirement sometime in the first half of this year, allowing streamers who run three minutes of ads per hour to turn it off. It’s the same number of ads required, but makes it easier to manage on the streamer’s side, which could result in fewer pre-roll ads overall. And if you get them, Twitch says it will use its picture-in-picture feature to let you watch the stream while the ads play.
Viewers will soon get a warning before mid-roll ads play during a stream and the ability to “snooze” them to presumably play later. Twitch says it’s also working to make Twitch Turbo, the $8.99 a month subscription service that removes ads from the site, “better and more relevant to our community.”
The increased focus on advertising is the start of all the ways Twitch seems to be looking to make it easier to browse and find streamers this year. Twitch tags get their own URLs on top of the existing front page curation to help you find topics you like, and mobile users can browse clips in a feature much like TikTok.
As it becomes easier for streamers to capitalize on trends and promote themselves, it should become easier to find someone you enjoy watching.
On the streamers side, they can pin up to 20 clips to their channel page and have tools to edit them for social media publishing. They also have the option to send videos and clips to their followers and subscribers, such as YouTube’s community posts. And a “Creator Home” will surface analytics for tags and the best time of day to stream specific categories and games.
This all feels like Twitch is making an effort to recognize and incorporate streamers’ best practices directly into the platform, rather than relying on word of mouth from influencers and third-party services. As it becomes easier for streamers to capitalize on trends and promote themselves, it should become easier to find someone you enjoy watching.
But the cost, of course, is the effort it takes to stand out on a crowded platform where thousands of people go every day. It’s getting harder and harder to make streaming a job and in a few months Twitch will be a 50/50 revenue split (opens in new tab) on everyone on the platform. Meanwhile, some of the most popular makers are to expand (opens in new tab) to TikTok and make deals to stream exclusively on YouTube.
However, Twitch is still the king of streaming, and most of the 2023 plans seem to keep it firmly on the throne.