Only a few days ago, Twitch rolled out a system that caused mid-roll ads to run if the streamer had not personally chosen to run an ad after a designated amount of time. To say that this decision was controversial would be an understatement, as many viewers and streamers voiced their displeasure with the change on Twitter. Now it seems that Twitch has decided to walk back this decision as it has announced that the system will be going away.
One of the primary complaints of this automated system was that it would cause viewers to miss some of the content happening on screen. While some may think this is a trivial complaint when it comes to a stream that could be hours long, others like streamer SmilinDominator experienced the problem first hand as a mid-roll ad ran while he was live reacting to PlayStation's PS5 Showcase. The 30 second unskippable ad caused him and his audience to miss the majority of the Hogwarts Legacy reveal trailer.
Perhaps it's instances like this that caused Twitch to announce on Twitter that it was ending its mid-roll ad test. In the tweet, Twitch stated that it was thankful for those that voiced their concerns with the system, however, it then went on to say that the inclusion of ads is "an essential part of keeping Twitch freely available." It finished by saying that it was going to continue to work on how ads work in an effort to give streamers more control.
While it makes sense that ad revenue would be important to the business side of Twitch, it can't be understated how much money Twitch already makes off of subscriptions alone. Twitch receives 50% of the money spent on a channel subscription, which for a Tier 1 subscription is about $2.50. While that doesn't sound like a lot, some streamers can have multiple thousands of subscribers. It was recently revealed that Shroud is the fastest-growing Twitch streamer, and currently has 8 million followers. Assuming that only 5% of those followers are subscribers, that would mean that Twitch makes $1 million per month off of Shroud alone.
Twitch seems to be in an odd spot when it comes to how it spends money. While the company states that ads are how it keeps the platform freely available, Twitch also seems to be willing to extend multi-million dollar exclusivity deals with popular streamers like Shroud and Ninja, as well as celebrities like Logic. That's not to say that these streamers aren't worth the investment, but it could make Twitch seem disingenuous to some when it comes to decisions like this automated system.