Twitch gives streamers ability to run 10 minutes of ads

Twitch, the Amazon-owned streaming platform, has been trying to get its users to watch more adverts.

It's been a long-running, problematic, and possibly necessary step as the platform looks to monetize its massive base of users.

Last year we saw a number of attempts to get more eyeballs on the platform's advertisements prompting predictable but entirely understandable pushback from users.

Those moves included attempts to block ad-blockers and forcing mid-roll adverts where previously it was at the streamers discretion.

Now Twitch is taking a different approach and is instead giving streamers yet more options for mid-stream adverts, specifically how long they can run, with the platform offering streamers the ability to run them for 600 seconds or 10 minutes. The previous max was 180s or 3 minutes.

Streamers who select to run ads at chosen times are rewarded by having pre-rolls disabled for a set time that differs depending on your creator status (Affiliate or Partner) and your region. According to Twitch industry commentator, Zach Bussey, increasing the selected adverts time does nothing to increase the pre-roll disablement.

As an affiliate, the MAX I can disable prerolls is 30 minutes (90-second ad). Doesn't matter if I run longer ones.

I hear different answers from Partners though. Some say 1-hour for 180-seconds, some say 40-minutes for 90-seconds.

Want to answer this definitively.

— Zach Bussey (@zachbussey) February 11, 2021

The response to this change will likely be more muted than the previous push to get advertisements to be more visible on the platform. Moving some of the responsibility onto streamers shoulders is a savvy move. Choose to run adverts for 10 minutes and it's the streamer that catches the flak, run them for 10 minutes and your stream doesn't care? Well even better, but to be honest Twitch probably doesn't care either way because you just watched 10 minutes of ads.