On Twitter, Twitch recently announced an update about their plan for 2023, with a key focus on engagement and increase income for streamers. This report comes straight from Tom Verrilli, the Chief Product Officer at Twitch, and Mike Minton, Chief Monetization Officer at Twitch.
Our plan for 2023: more flexible tools, more options to earn and more ways to engage your communities.
Read the new open letter from our product and monetization executives about some of the work we’re committed to this year: https://t.co/ESlzeGbBdL pic.twitter.com/fy5SqazMHi
— Twitch (@Twitch) January 25, 2023
Some key changes on the horizon
As one of the biggest streaming sites in the world, some of the key weaknesses fans addressed in recent times included ads and income for streamers. Things such as pre-roll ads — ads that happen as soon as you tune into a streamer — have frustrated viewers across the internet.
Ad changes a priority
This led to some ad changes, highlighted in this piece. First off, the Ads Incentive program is getting a change, now receiving requests from the Twitch community. You can opt-in, and once you’re in, you’ll have more control over ads on your streams. Alongside that, updates will be coming to Ad Manager, now giving streamers more tools to see when ads will arrive instead of making it a surprise with little knowledge of when.
When it comes to the pre-rolls mentioned earlier, now if streamers do a minimum of three minutes of ads per hour, pre-rolls will be disabled. Also, the picture-in-picture format will now apply to a majority of pre-roll ads. Fans will also get more of a heads-up when ads are coming, as well as getting a snooze option for mid-roll ads.
Lastly, the plan accounts for fans who don’t want Twitch ads, as the Twitch Turbo system will now get more updates from 2023 onwards.
More income options
Also in this update, the team went into detail with ways to improve income for streamers. One of the key examples is events like “Subtember,” a promotion where subscriptions are half price during the month of September. The post mentions more customized local initiatives — other events that can help build viewership plus give viewers other potential boons. On top of that, the post specifically mentions “experimenting with personalized discounts based on viewers’ behavior to better inspire streamer support”.
Another key potential income option is a goal to improve one that already exists: sponsorships. Starting with a few and eventually rolling out to more, Twitch aims to improve sponsorships on streamers’ channels. These include things like channel skins, graphics, above chat and in more places across channels.
New tools and changes coming down the pipeline
To finish off the update for the 2023 plan, the two authors confirmed lots of new minor Twitch changes coming out in the future. The first is better editing software for VODs, allowing for easier short or long-form content. Other cool additions include Pinned Clips, which allows you to pin up to 20 clips to your channel, as well as finally allowing streamers to add emotes to their stream titles and adding an Upcoming Streams section.
Program Guest Star will get more future updates, with the goals of trying to do more cross-stream channel experiences. Sound Bites will allow for viewers to donate sounds to their streamers directly through the site. Viewer Milestones will show off more achievements the viewers have done to their streamers, aiming for more of a connection. Also, the Creator Home is going out to all Affiliates and Partners, allowing for more customization.
Finally, more browser support for other popular browsers such as Firefox, Mircosoft Edge and Safari are also on the way.
There are more changes on the way, from better customizable tags to better discovery features for mobile users. To follow up on the plan for 2023, the Twitch team talked about it on a stream just after the blog post, now available in VOD format.
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