Twitch started offering uBlock users every 10 or 20 minutes
Ads are important on Twitch in the same way they are important on any advertiser-dependent website for revenue. (Hey, Vox Media.) But it's a war. Ad blockers keep websites free of ads, then sites innovate themselves around blockers. Escalation is the rule.
It is also the backdrop to the current advertising-based controversy on the streaming site. Twitch pushed an update that broke uBlock, a popular ad blocker. UBlock users are suddenly greeted with a popup indicating that they may be using a third-party tool or browser extension that "affects site performance" every 10 or 20 minutes - just like a mid-roll advertisement being launched from the site.
A spokesperson for Twitch told me that users were receiving that specific popup because the tool they're using is manipulating the site's code. This person stressed that the mid-roll experience is over, and added that Twitch hasn't really changed the overall ad density of the site - meaning that the only automated ads that are shown on the site are pre-ads, and broadcast creators can disable these ads for their subscribers. (They also indicated that some large broadcasters may use third-party tools to run automatic ads on their broadcasts, and that those ads may sometimes appear to come from Twitch.) For its part, Twitch says it's not targeting ads blocking users with more ads than No other ads.
For Twitch, the ads are a little different than on other free sites: because the service is live, the ads as they are currently on the site block the content. You can miss things in a way that you cannot, like YouTube. Imagine, if you will, watching a soccer match when a non-skippable ad is played midway through the game. You can always watch the replays, of course, which means, technically, you haven't missed anything. But it's horrific to lose the defining moment as it unfolds. This was the case for a few weeks on Twitch this summer: The company started testing auto ads during playback, which were universally hated.
Bottom line: When an ad is blocked, no one is making money - neither the streamers nor Twitch. However, since CPM is what it is, the operators get the worst end of the deal. As of September, both partners and affiliates in America were earning $ 3.50 per 1,000 ad views.
“Things are hostile because broadcasters don't like showing ads.” Lowco, one of Twitch's partners, says when I got to it via Discord, viewers won't like the ads either because of that. “When you get 10 viewers ... Show ads, I mean, it won't be like that. , is not it? And it is very intrusive for viewers. ”“ I think Twitch could do a lot better in this regard, creating ads, which is something that works with live broadcasts. ”
Lowco says it has no problem with Twitch targeting users who use ad blockers because it's a big part of Twitch's business model. But she also says that she thinks Twitch could do better with streaming devices. "I think if you are going to enforce the ads, it won't work," she says. "Twitch is all about society until it comes to these kinds of things. Then it looks top-down. And to me, I think people respond negatively to this kind of forced execution, you know." That seems correct.
She also thinks ads on Twitch could do better. "You can have skippable ads, better inline ads, and fewer third-party ads that are smoother with live content - the live nature of Twitch."
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