Updates to Twitch Commercial Policy
TL;DR — Changes coming to our video advertising policy in the coming weeks mean you will get to your content sooner, the ads you do see will fit more naturally into the broadcast flow, and the browsing experience will be a lot smoother. We’re limiting pre-rolls on live content so you will only see one every few minutes instead of every time you load a stream, refresh, change resolutions, etc. We’re also giving all partners the ability to run commercial breaks for up to three minutes at a time in 30-second intervals and limiting the frequency of all commercial breaks to once every eight minutes. Read on for more.
As our Turbo feedback showed, many of our users think critically about revenue for streamers and it’s clear that we should be providing more context to avoid confusion. To that end, we’d like to notify everyone that we’re changing our commercial policy on pre-rolls and mid-rolls in the coming weeks, leading to a better experience for both viewers and broadcasters. For clarity, pre-rolls are video ads that run automatically when you join a live stream, whereas mid-rolls are ads triggered by the broadcaster, usually between games or when there is an extended break in content. This policy change affects both.
Currently, we attempt to show you a pre-roll whenever you join a live stream (you may not see one every time due to geography and/or seasonality). This also occurs when you refresh the stream, change the resolution, pop out the stream, or accidentally navigate away. Even though these actions don’t really occur that often in aggregate, sitting through another ad is a pretty annoying experience, so we’re changing it so you can’t see a pre-roll more than once every few minutes.
Note: The pre-roll must run completely before triggering this exemption. Also, if you are disabling flash cookies, this implementation cannot tell when you have last seen a pre-roll, so they must be enabled to take advantage of this change.
It’s our hope that this change also makes it easier to browse different streams until you find the one you want to watch (take advantage of this and try out the “Random” filter on our new directory page to discover new streams!). We’ve been experimenting with different pre-roll frequencies and we’re still looking for the length that offers an excellent viewer experience while still enabling partners to passively accumulate pre-roll ad revenue from new viewers joining their stream (most users stay and watch the first stream they land on), so please note that the minimum period may change. We expect this to roll out in the coming weeks.
We’re also making changes to mid-roll commercial breaks. Currently, partners are given the ability to run 30-second ads at their discretion with no limit on frequency or density. There are also a few broadcasters who were given 60 and 90-second commercial break options, which are limited to once every 8 minutes. We’ve noticed two major trends emerge:
Broadcasters tend to run ads during breaks in content (between games, getting a drink, letting out the dog, etc.)
Broadcasters tend to wait for much longer than 8 minutes between ad breaks
Broadcasters tend to run multiple 30-second ads during their breaks
Conceptually, this makes sense. A 20 to 30 minute game followed by 90 seconds of ads while the broadcaster stretches their legs and queues for a new match feels reasonable. For broadcasters streaming games without discrete matches, breaks tended to occur with about the same frequency. Television isn’t a perfect comparable, but the ratio there is ~10 minutes of commercials for every 20 minutes of content. Viewers don’t seem to mind the much shorter breaks on Twitch, and smart broadcasters make it a point to not do much during the breaks so their viewers don’t miss anything important (some even respond to questions and comments by interacting in the chat during the commercials).
We’re also giving every partner the ability to run commercial breaks up to three minutes in length in 30-second increments: 30, 60, 90, 120, 150, or 180-second breaks. Commercial breaks of any length (even 30-second breaks) will be limited to once every eight minutes. The vast majority of broadcasters do a very good job of making sure their viewers feel satisfied with the amount of content they receive between commercial breaks, and this change shouldn’t impact their commercial habits at all. Viewers are savvy, and tend to give good guidance to the broadcaster about appropriate commercial break length. Also, this will allow you to schedule some downtime for personal breaks. The intent was never to chain broadcasters to the commercial button during their breaks, so we feel this approach makes the most sense.
More importantly, and the largest driver for this change, is current ad agencies usually view advertisement on Live with a VOD mindset and running multiple 30-second ads in succession is treated as “spam”. There is a difference between a 90-second block of three 30-second ads and three 30-second ads run in succession, even though there is no difference to the end user (it all depends how often the ad is queued by the broadcaster). Functionally, nothing will really change as broadcasters tend to space out ad breaks of multiple ads longer than eight minutes naturally.
This change is in keeping with our desire to constantly improve the viewer experience. The pre-roll-heavy VOD model doesn’t work as well for Live because Live content is immediate, and you want to get to the content as soon as possible. Mid-rolls during live broadcasts tend to occur during content downtime, so you’re not “missing” anything immediate like you might with a pre-roll.
As a side note, we’d like to explain that both this policy and Twitch Turbo have been in separate development for quite some time, and share different motivations. This change is required to align our commercial policy with advertiser policy, but also the natural pattern of viewer and broadcaster behavior to improve the viewer experience and increase advertising effectiveness, whereas Twitch Turbo is the result of viewers asking for an entirely ad-free product.
As always, we encourage users to leave us their thoughts in the comments below or by sending an email to feedback@twitch.tv. Happy watching!
Sincerely, The Twitch Team