Twitch Removes Mid-Roll Ads After Negative Response

Twitch recently rolled out a new ad experiment where it placed mid-roll ads in people’s streams. [...]

Twitch recently rolled out a new ad experiment where it placed mid-roll ads in people's streams. The ads would show up for some viewers during streams and would support the creators that people were watching, but the streamers themselves wouldn't have any control over the ads. The test went about as well as anyone would expect and has since ended with the mid-roll ads being removed from the streams in response to the negative feedback.

With the release of the mid-roll adds, Twitch said the content creators would get paid when the ads were shown just as they would be for the pre-roll ads that show up before streams and the ad breaks. Without creators having control over these ads though, the times they could pop up were much more unpredictable than the other types of ads and could come at unfortunate moments during a stream.

Control or not, seeing another ad is something no viewer wants, so the response from viewers was expectedly against the mid-roll ads. Twitch gave an update on the test following all of this feedback to say the test had concluded.

While the implication from the tweet was that the ads would be removed, it wasn't made clear through the tweet alone. In a response to a user who asked what this meant for mid-roll ads, Twitch confirmed the ads would be removed.

Since this was just a test in the first place, there's always the chance that mid-roll ads could return in some form later in the future, perhaps if they're updated to give creators more control over them or to be less intrusive. But for now, the mid-roll ads everyone hated so much are gone.

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