Twitch Adpocalypse

[@MADMAXX-7]

Philosophers: "How could you ever truly measure the worth of a human life?" Thor: "It's 0.8 burritos per month."

[@Acrylescent]

Damn I’m being grossly overvalued

[@SomeOrdinaryJanitor]

now THAT'S a unit of measurement i can get behind.

[@TraxtasyMedia]

And Burritos are Wellingtons

[@jaydub6313]

If only Edward Elric knew this

[@Kyla-Stormhazard]

​@@TraxtasyMedia Nah. Wellingtons are burritos

[@HullBox]

I like knowing that we are not numbers to Thor, we are simply burritos

[@PirateSoftware]

You are the best burritos.

[@CaptainAmphy]

Put me back in the microwave, chief

[@LunaTheBeast-lf1ly]

​@@CaptainAmphy Just don't complain to me when ya pop

[@AlecV305]

Not just any Burrito either. 5 layered burritos!! ❤

[@christopherbgsted4749]

​@@PirateSoftwareWhy did this warm my heart. I cannot believe it

[@AubDenashi]

TLDR; 😮 oh no! Anyways…. 🤣

[@Zathren]

Guess they'll either move on with their lives or come to KZbin.

[@ThatGuyNamedRick]

I believe no one should be able to profit off of politics. It's too easy to bait and drag viewers into echo chambers and extort them.

[@pete5516]

@@ThatGuyNamedRickyou just described what has happened to most of the USA to make them vote for the r apist

[@MakerBees333]

@@ThatGuyNamedRickFully agreed, at the same time priority should be put on banning Big Pharmaceutical and Military Industrial Complex from buying news coverage as it can ONLY lead to extreme amounts of Propaganda.

[@pete5516]

@@ThatGuyNamedRickdamn it’s almost like that’s exactly what’s happening in America right now…

[@Azeria]

The lesson here is simple, whether or not this really is platform wide: Creators, you need to diversify your income streams, now. Any one of the platforms you depend on for your income can just pull the rug at any time. Sometimes it’s intentional, sometimes it’s not, but it can happen.

[@pfzht]

Yep! Just started uploading to Rumble, from Twitch streams that I also export to KZbin. I'm still on the lookout for what would be the platform with the highest ROI, that isn't censorship addicted.

[@miguelguillermo6159]

@@pfzhtSetting up patreon or something is also a good job. Or do what Mutha does and have another part time job in the meantime. It's really crappy how creators can always get the short end of the stick

[@pfzht]

@@miguelguillermo6159 I'm primarily concerned about reach, as I do have an income I can survive on. Is Patreon actually any good for getting discovered on?

[@Thiefwriter]

​@@pfzht No. Patreon is not for discovery, it's for people who are already fans to support you.

[@pfzht]

@Thiefwriter that's about what I thought of it.

[@hoboofserenity]

I REALLY love how transparent you are in communicating stuff like this. Both asking questions in the open, and detailed answers to chat with questions related to things like this. Transparency is so important to help educate people on matters that most would otherwise have no insight into, and it helps prevent future misunderstandings for everyone involved. Transparency, clear communication and encouraging people to learn and immerse themselves into it instead of jumping on a band wagon are all skills that are transferable to every aspect of your life, and helping your viewers learn that is really good of you and something that will help a lot of people down the line.

[@rapsody230]

bro, two of the biggest categories of content got 0 ads and since he personally did not get impacted then adpocalipse does not exist... meh, he should stick to videogames.

[@TheTruthHurtsSometimes]

Calm down with the glazing good lord. You have to understand that just because these changes haven’t affected pirate personally it doesn’t mean they aren’t a massive issue affecting a lot of other streamers. While this video helps put some aspects of what’s currently happening into perspective it isn’t some perfect unbiased masterpiece like you claim it is lol.

[@stuckpiginc]

@@TheTruthHurtsSometimesI think they are talking about the totality and not just this subject. Could def be wrong but, if meant in the totality, Thor is def one of the most transparent and really puts obvious effort into not being biased

[@angela_eric]

I mentioned this in the KZbin chat. However instead of calling it an adpocolypse could we call it a tagpocolypse since there has been a dramatic cut in people's advertising revenue around a specific tag group?

[@yuGmooDehT]

I like it tbh, good stuff

[@PirateSoftware]

Agree on this. Using tags for monetization targets is really not great.

[@halifur]

@@angela_eric how did you get ratioed 😭😭

[@Mr.F-xd3pp]

You cant say this without a shadow of a doubt, the doubt being that credible secoundhand sources are saying advertisers are pulling their spending from twotch. Either you dont believe that or you just are intentionally not including that because it creates dount in your argument. When Thor made that statement, it was one without a shadow of doubt, which is false. Its like saying weather experts cannot be trusted since the hard data or actual events like a hurricane hasnt occur. You could make an educated guess, be doubtfull of it but cannot make a concrete statement and be obtuse to evidence that causes doubt.

[@AdarinMonk]

​@@halifur1) That was an hour ago, stats changed. 2) How/why does it matter if a comment is ratioed by a reply supporting it? 3) How/why do you think it's enough of a thing to even talk about?

[@purplepenguin43]

Twitch: has a problem Thor: “wait i had a pull request for that”

[@DonnaSTello]

😂

[@box420]

I hate ads with a passion. It feels like there is ad in my face every 5 seconds. Like in the last 5 years the ads have gone CRAZY

[@Halvos12]

Use Brave browser. No ads in like 7 years.

[@chaos-lovingrabbit]

Browser with ad blocker My saviour

[@joshuatraumjager6633]

@@chaos-lovingrabbitKZbin is already finding ways to disable ad blocked browsers to allow their site to be visited/used. Popular ones such as Brave are no longer a viable option.

[@TechnoMinded-qp5in]

AdGuard still works on Chrome for now I would use Opera or Brave Browser though at this point Google is being forced to sell Google Chrome for anti-competitive and monopolistic practices serves them right maybe they can sell it to Elon Musk and he can save adblockers.

[@revan1202]

Oh, you think it's bad now? I think Devon stack did a stream on it before, and there was an advertisement that was like almost 30 minutes. Pretty much half. The whole show was just the advertisements.

[@rattlehead999]

I read the thumbnail as: "let's talk ass"

[@Tory-JJ]

*raspberry noises*

[@ViviBuchlaw]

I'd listen to Thor talk about ass for 50 minutes

[@kingakuma7]

I like ass

[@tranthien3932]

This comment right here, Baseball Doggo.

[@Re.tr-02]

So you’re saying you would want to hear a 50 minute rant of Thor talking about ass?

[@mhbones475]

Found your channel from your shorts, I love that you run a ferret rescue, so many people get ferrets thinking they're like weird rats, and don't do their research prior to getting a ferret. So many of the good noodles end up in shelters because of that, so I always support ferret rescues.

[@sipher7240]

Thor: "They also don't like it if you curse within the first 15 seconds of a video" Also Thor: *Says shit within the first 15 seconds of the video*

[@alexobery9813]

I'm glad that you're taking a position to protect your community Thor (and i think i get where you're coming from), and I love the ferrets. I would like to say though, with regard to the lived experience "protection" its easier to keep your lived experience to matters that aren't being subject to legislation or policies, if you aren't one of the groups being debated or targeted in political discourse. It's hard to avoid politics when the mainstream discourse is very focused on your identity as a political threat.

[@jaredfriesen833]

I don't really go on twitch anymore. For a while I'd see who's streaming, click on someone I'm following, get hit with 4 adds before I get the watch and I immediately lose interest. Even if I have enough patience to power through the first adds, I still get hit with another 2 to 4 adds every 5 to 15 minutes. I know the streamers usually choose where they put adds and I know they're kinda forced to show adds in a way so I get it. But it makes the viewer experience so bad I just can't watch twitch anymore.

[@matteoorlandi856]

I have 2 Friends that are streamer and their strategy Is to Place as much as possible of the ADS at the start of the stream, and be very clear with the viewers "yes, i know It sucks, but this way you have less Ads during the rest of the stream" but then there are ADS they cannot do anything about and they are getting every time more invasive. It's really denting their community.

[@Cygnus_B]

Same

[@arendking]

The few streamers I still occasionally watch do a thing where they take a quick break every hour or so to go get food/drink/use bathroom so they play an ad or two during those "pause" moments

[@mezu-e]

I pay for both Twitch Turbo and KZbin Premium to avoid this problem.

[@amiablereaper]

Yeah twitch is lowkey unwatchable these days. Like at least with the old tv model the show stopped while ads were playing. Now you're missing huge chunks of live content at a time because "whoops, gotta play ads"

[@sojaro]

People online have been talking about the normal January and February ad dip for a long time now. I know TotalBiscuit was talking about the cyclical pattern of ad buy during the 2017 "ad-pocalypse". I know other people were giving fairly reasonable analysis about it then, too. Gamers will always be seeing the sky falling before they listen to someone who does the long-term data analysis. But thank you for this in-depth breakdown.

[@scotthoover1568]

We also just had a major election in the US. Ad spending is going to inherently go down post-election as candidate and campaigns no longer need the advertising since they've already won or lost. This is going to naturally hit streams that discuss politics and not hit those who don't.

[@arthurjameson2178]

This isn't what's happening. I doubt much of the campaign spends on either side targeted twitch. Advertisers are specifically trying to avoid certain "political" tags. This includes tags like "Iran" and "Venezuela" which is bs and inadvertently racist since people from those countries who don't discuss politics are also being denied ad-revenue. If what you are saying was all that was happening streams with the tag "election" wouldn't go down from thousands of dollars to tens. They would just see a decrease of maybe like $50-$100 max

[@user-to7ds6sc3p]

I don't think that has any major impact, as election ADs should only be served to American viewers.

[@crusaderanimation6967]

@@user-to7ds6sc3p Considering that American viewers might be good chunk of add revenue, so it might have some impact.

[@alchemicpink2392]

@@user-to7ds6sc3p They're served to everyone who opts out of location tracking (which only partially works because the internet is, at this stage, a panopticon *grumble,grumble*)

[@86pp73]

​​@@user-to7ds6sc3p American users are a pretty big market on a predominantly English-speaking platform like Twitch, though. How much that actually affects ad revenue hinges on how actively American politicians used Twitch for advertising

[@BeeGee1004]

Thanks for putting this out as a pants. I watch lots of twitch and there's a LOT of misconceptions about ads and revenue. I watched the stream LIVE, but now I have a vid to send to any streamer that wants to know about ads and revenue

[@Laverbruh]

I am not sure if it's just me, but I feel like there's been more ads on KZbin and they've been more annoying. Its not rare that I see 20 second ads without skip option. So annoying.

[@no_alias_for_me]

Use an ad-blocker my dude. Haven't seen a single ad in at least 8 years. And no, I'm not paying for Premium.

[@Laverbruh]

@@no_alias_for_me Cant really have an ad blocker on phone... I do have an ad-blocker on PC tho

[@dfunited1]

It isn't your imagination. YT ads have been ramping up, especially the 14.9 second unskippables. I prefer NewPipe for mobile, no ads and it can run with the screen off.

[@cyberdemon1702]

@@Laverbruh KZbin appears to be doing a frog in the pot strategy with ads. They’ve been slowly increasing frequency while at the same time removing the option to skip more frequently. It could also be that some channels I watch are full sending ads and changing settings to not allow skipping, assuming that’s even possible. Either way, it’s an inconvenience, not a disaster. If the people I watch are making some extra coin because of this shift then so be it.

[@Laverbruh]

@@cyberdemon1702 Same. Don't know if it's KZbin thing or creator thing, but I do know that I was listening to Omori OST on KZbin and I've been getting ads after like every 5 songs (and most of those ads were un-skippable 20 seconds ads). I am not too sure, but can you not have any ad revenue on videos less that 8 minutes long? (all songs were separate video and less that 8 minutes) If so, then why un-skippable ads?? I find it weird.

[@smppboi]

You have become my favorite steamer because if the line "I'll just pay them more, you can't stop me" I'm glad there are people like you

[@helios5752]

6:02 was literally typing a message about how it makes sense that companies would jackup advertising leading up to Christmas then cut it dramatically following Christmas so it feels nice to have my thoughts validated in real time

[@spacedoubt15]

When you click on a Pirate Software short but now you're 25 minutes in and realise you live here now.

[@majormushu]

It is wild to me though, i heard about this topic from DVAU where he was basically like "PirateSoftware is talking out of his ass with no evidence saying the adpocolypse isnt real" and hearing you actually talking about it im genuinely confused as to how he got that idea.

[@Endofnames]

I've never heard of this DVAU before, so I can't really comment on them specifically. But, many content creators farm engagement via sensationalism. Thus they have a vested financial interest in attempting to quash more moderate takes on issues (irrespective of the accuracy of those takes).

[@majormushu]

@Endofnames the full name is DarkViperAU he's a pretty popular GTA streamer. He also does rambles where he talks about current events and other random shit and while I don't agree with all of his takes, most of the time he is decently accurate and not going for sensationalism. He does seem to genuinely believe most of the stuff he says as a lot of it started with the random topics that would come up in chat while he was gaming.

[@Ar1AnX1x]

@@Endofnames exactly, "ADPOCALYPSE IS HERE" type of content gets more clicks than actual analysis, sadly

[@uhwaykin]

@@Endofnames I am familiar with “DVAU” and you are correct that they have a vested interest but it’s not in quashing moderate takes, just in the Twitch Adpocalypse narrative.

[@persnicketyVC]

Can confirm. I work in the ads industry as a secretary for both digital/print for American clients. Lots of shit going on starting around November specifically (11/22/24 i am in pain), December everyone goes on break, January slows the hell down post-holiday.

[@axis8396]

It's funny how things are just coming full-circle back to Cable again: ad breaks on streaming, various platforms bundling together(Disney, Hulu, and ESPN have a bundle together for example). There's even ads/ad-free rates for at least a few services. Been interesting watching these things evolve over the last couple decades

[@MichaelPohoreski]

*Greed knows no bounds.* Companies never respect people.

[@magicball3201]

Now that streaming has replaced cable, they have no incentive to be a better service than cable was. Cable worked because it was cheap for the company with a large profit margin. Why shouldn't they repeat history?

[@EqualitySmurf]

This was insanely informative about streaming revenues. As an economist I'm not totally unfamilar with how advertising works, but this was really quite a lot of new information. Many thanks!

[@scp2539]

43:15 Back in the dark ages of Twitch I would occasionally get hit with "ads" that were actually news reports so they were several hours long. The longest I watched was about a trainwreck at 3.5 hours. Had the stream open in another window.

[@imzesok]

I once got an ad that was 2.5 hour long religious sermon. it wasn't on twitch though, it was here on KZbin. 🤣 it turns out YT doesn't vet shit, and someone uploaded a whole ass movie into the ad system. Wonder if they ever fixed that.

[@SpookDudeGoesWild]

Man, I am fairly sure KZbin started recommending me your videos because of my friends, but wow am I glad, because you explain somewhat complex things in an easy to understand way, thank you for all of the info you provide.

[@grantmurdock7385]

Story about language in the first 15 seconds. I used to work as a projectionist, and usually for this big multiplex there were two of us. Often, when something was reaching the end of its run, we'd have something share a theater. Back and forth if they're similar, early for kids films, late for PG13 and R rated films. Cool. So one day I get a frantic call and run to the projector. A bunch of kids piled into the theater to see the movie Elf. The movie that was lined up... was Bad Santa. And that first 15 seconds is Billy Bob Thornton cursing his brains out, that's how the theater learned the wrong movie was running. Boy that was fun to fix.

[@eira5586]

I really respect your approach to ads. Ads are a fact of life on the internet, but at least when I see them on your channel I know I'm not missing anything. But more importantly you're transparent about where the ad revenue goes - watch this ad, pay the mods. Watch this ad, help us buy ferret food. Watch my ads so other people don't get one before the stream even starts.

[@TheBorzoi]

The Burger King campaign was bad enough just with them "donating" $5 to advertise on streams but what made it worse is that they claimed to support streamers but in all the footage they made, they blurred the streamer's face, changed the voice and didn't provide any links to channels or anything like that. In most of the clips, they also changed the game play footage to some generic crappy flash game (presumably to avoid copyright). They actively avoided supporting streamers.

[@AdmiralTails]

Wait, they would then try to proceed to *use* the footage of them making these "donations"? That's even worse than it originally sounded. But yeah, doing that they basically *had* to do all that stuff, because, having not negotiated anything, they don't have the rights to *any* of that stuff.

[@AlpakaWhacker]

5:08 Looking at my past 4 years of Twitch, I often find that ad revenue dips in September into October and I put it down to SUBtember resulting in a higher sub count which makes sense to me as more Subscribers would result in less people being served ads and thus less ad revenue. This is of course assuming that CCV and Hours watched remain roughly the same.

[@James-bm7ce]

The ad amount thing isn't always a lie. I have gotten 15 ads once but it was still 2 minutes. So 25 ads doesn't sound off. What happens is the more ads on twitch the less time each individual ad takes to play out

[@sisterfister7891]

_I remember I freaked you out months ago wondering what your ad revenue was- I was comparing some of my fave streamers with no real fruit- but this video! You answered many and more questions I had. I appreciate you dude, keep rollin'. 😶‍🌫🤙_

[@moonratt]

The Ads directed to broadcast are done all the time on TSN for hockey games, football games, etc. When watching a hockey game, keep an eye on the sides of the rink. The rink sells ad space to local advertisers. So for example, when watching a game in Detroit in the arena, you'll see ads for local businesses, or maybe Starbucks. People watching on TSN might occasionally see the actual physical ads, but if the system can pick up the rink sides correctly, you'll see the boards painted with ads semi-specific to your location. With football games, it's the stuff painted on the field and anything that might be seen on ad boards at the sides of the field. Baseball, it's the backfield area. This stuff coming to games via streaming is interesting, but yes, it does bypass paying the streamer, and that's crap.

[@jamal874]

Women m

[@captainp367]

Damn son that intro was nice!

[@Crackenstein]

I know this has nothing to do with adds but "a day in the life of a ferret rescue center" would be an amazing video.

[@rimprant2796]

He streams his ferret rescue 24/7

[@cyberdemon1702]

@@rimprant2796 true but that’s not really what this person is saying. They are looking for a deep dive into the nuts and bolts. We get a pretty thorough rundown from Thor on his streams but it would be cool to get some video action showing “a day in the life”. How the meals are prepared, some of the medical stuff (administering chemo for example) etc

[@Crackenstein]

@@rimprant2796 yes but there isnt like an all in one video where we get to see what all goes on

[@albestri43]

I physically went to Spain for a wedding, watched a video on KZbin, and now I constantly get Spanish ads. Great that it’s sticking with me forever now lol

[@SalariaStudios]

One thing I've learned out of my time studying and getting my foot into game making. Don't argue with the Data analysis.

[@handson4580]

but you can try to bring some humanity into them

[@DaLoneGuy]

i love your "pants" videos especially on wednesdays and thursdays because i can still have you in the background while gaming

[@VahnBlack]

I literally read that thumbnail as 'Let's talks AIDS' and I went for a loop cuz not only did I misread it, I thought the picture was of Thor holding a ferret and I went 'FERRETS ARE VECTORS OF AIDS?!?' and t'was the shortest wildest roller coaster ride I had in recent memory.

[@brandonpalmer5208]

One thing I really like about Thor is that he spoke for a solid 50 minutes here with constant info. Very densely packed with knowledge about misconceptions and the info to help you understand “why” it doesn’t work the way you may have thought. He seems like a fine fellow.

[@DudelRok]

What is really fascinating about those "dips" is they translate through our ENTIRE economy. Our economy functions in quarters (well, thirds, but corporate overlords call it quarters) and there are HUGE dips in January, March/April, and September.

[@0rphros]

I think it is a quarter because it's 4 months of the years.

[@MrSJPowell]

@@0rphros Quarters are 3 months.

[@carlitosskater89]

January-post christmas April-pre summer vacations September-post summer vacations and start of the educational year. All expenditures increased just before or after those months. Normal that the ads also are less prevalent then, they know they are gonna be having less effect (if they ever did have some).

[@ToshioThunder]

Sometimes Chicken Little is the reason we learn more about the sky. Thank you, dumb bird, for driving me to the library.

[@SanjayTPlays]

When I travel overseas the first week of ads are in English and then they switch to local ads

[@pearceburns2787]

I saw YukkoEX, a trans V-tuber also complain about this for a different reason. [Editing in a TL;DR: the worry is that tags could be used to not run ads against LGBT content, pushing out the viability of LGBT streamers. The Bud Light problem.] The requirement for tags for policial content also includes language to not talk about "ideology around sexuality, gender, race or religion". This was seen to opening the door to get any pro LGBT stream forcibly tagged as LGBT because quite often these figures will talk about their lived experience, or have people in chat talk about lived experiences. I believe twitch has had to make a clarifying tweet around people being aloud to talk about lived experiences, but i imagine that will not stop people reporting channels or whatever the mechanism of enforcing tags will be. [Edit Thor talks about this around 26:27] This language is made less flattering being included beside "talking about legislation [about LGBTQ rights, etc.]" and "talking about war, conflicts and national security issues." If the KZbin apocalypse is anything to go buy, this will have a nock-on effect on the viability of LGBT streaming on twitch, I imagine regardless of whether it is illegal by twitch standards. The barrage of complaints will be a nightmare for SOMEONE to deal with and/or the forced LGBT tags will ad-pocalypse specific demographics of creators.

[@lssjgaming1599]

Brands are already targeting and pulling out of brand deals with LGBT creators after the election so I have no doubt on my mind that we especially will be targeted by the adpocalypse

[@spliffingrat5469]

the question would then be: -if a soldier in a warzone streams and talks about his daily life, is that than not talking about war? -if a politician starts streaming, can he talk about political topics, he encounters in his daily life? or isnt that then just politics? - what about a P-star talking about her work? isnt that then also explicit content? not wanna say, that its not bad for the streamers and there should be a solution. im just thinking how other genres, just would use the same logic to monetize their stuff, that advertisers not wanna have their ads played on.

[@lssjgaming1599]

​@spliffingrat5469 i think the difference is that human rights violations are different than something like talking about sex and violence. Its one thing to talk about how you might deal with discrimination for being part of the LGBT community, but it's different when you're talking about stuff like imperialism if you're a veteran.

[@spliffingrat5469]

@@lssjgaming1599 a soldier in an active warzone, talking about his daily life isnt a veteran talking about imperialism. when a soldier talks about what he does in war, why they do certain things, how many people died that day, then its his lived experience. you talk about "human rights violations". see how advertisers maybe not wanna have their ads played bevor that? here on YT stuff like that gets also demonetized, especially if a light is shined on it, like twitch has right now. you make +18 (non-sexual) content? well, enjoy minimum reach, limited ads and a long term fight for your "right"to those limited ads. (its a privilege btw to get paid for your content by ads. lets never forget that. especially if you have "1st world" audience). so you not only f´ed your own channel, you now show the little amount of people who watch your stuff some scam ads. so only google is making stonks, while the rest suffers lol

[@RobertDrane]

@@spliffingrat5469 Twitch actually classifies veterans as a protected class. Like, I used to watch a guy who was banned for hate speech because his comments on U.S. soldiers. Advertisers aren't opposed to politics though. I think that's fairly easy to demonstrate: everyone runs ads at NFL games and they double as recruitment drives for the military. What they're actually averse to is confrontation.

[@plushquasar653]

Like your content dude. Keep up the good work.

[@Nerex7]

Thank you for another deeply educational video, Thor. I actually assumed it was common knowledge that ads drop after December (and common sense, actually). I'm also always very happy to see someone combat the doom-sayers and sensationalists with rationalism and facts.

[@qibble455]

Amazing level of info, Very well presented.

[@cosmonauthal7651]

I’m glad Thor explained things but it doesn’t sit right with me. So Twitch can just decide what is “political”. Like for example legislation gets put into place that harms a streamer. Said streamer is then punisher further for speaking about their lives? Or what if Twitch ROYALLY fucks up and it makes it to the news? Streamers can’t bring it up because it’s “political”. It’s too grey and I don’t trust Twitch enough to hold that power.

[@TomatoBread-l5f]

That was so informational! Thank you for the clarification.

[@mstarOnYT]

Re Bluesky surviving without ads: I think that Bluesky has a lot higher chances to survive without ads than most other services. Primarily because it's intended as a distributed service where the Bluesky company itself doesn't have a big role with community hosted PDS, proxies, app views, etc

[@edgargad2941]

Steel and construction work follows a similar trend too. October till December are slow, then everything picks up again in January.

[@joecobb7153]

Yeah bcz it's cold af

[@edgargad2941]

@joecobb7153 that, and concrete has a hard time drying when everything is frozen.

[@krieg_guardsman9548]

So big names are starting to pull ads now from all of twitch not just the tags

[@Clip_It1]

i LOVE how open thor is, he does not hide things, he tells you it all

[@tichat0025]

I have a question. as a very small streamer i don't care about the ads revenue, but the ads themself are annoying for peoples who watch me. can i just add the tag "politics" or something like that, and peoples won't get ads anymore while watching me?

[@lksas2295]

Iirc yes, and lots of smaller streamers are doing that already

[@rasmachris94]

I'd imagine this could work although the ad revenue has dropped by up to 80% you would still see some ads. I actually remember someone [it might've been Thor] state that having ads in the middle of the stream is better than pre-rolls. People rarely stick around to sit through pre-roll ads, but if they're already invested they will tolerate the mid roll ads. This means higher engagement throughout the stream, and an influx of newer viewers comparatively. I'd try without the tag for two weeks, and then with the tag for two weeks. Have an account or friend record how many ads they get per week on average and then compare. That way you have a data-driven idea of how much ads are affected by having the tag vs not.

[@DrownedLamp9]

To Tichat's original question, for now the answer seems to be yes. Should reduce ads, if not remove them. It could get patched at any time, and Twitch may see it as an exploit. If your not making headlines you SHOULD be safe to do it, but technically dangerous. But with Rasmachris's pre-rolls vs stream adbreaks. The only problem I see with that is other platforms get stuck with the ad breaks. So youtube viewers 'suffer' for adbreaks 'caused' by Twitch. Probably the best way to do it now, but someone gets the short straw.

[@alyshamaurer9541]

I believe this is exactly what asmongold did when twitch forced ads on his streams. And hes not small. I don't watch him so can't say for sure but I think so.

[@tallesmagno201]

All you have to do is run 3mins of ads per hour of streaming to get full revenue, just set it up when you take a brb. Dont deny yourself free money.

[@cllaay]

I can back the timing up! I’m working with a marketing team for my upcoming dnd project and we pushed KS launch back from january to february bc people need a few paychecks post christmas before theyll back kickstarters; we also will be pausing ad spend during december, at basically everyone’s suggestion.

[@siph0r154]

27:16 the big crying elephant in the room with this statement is, that the lived experience for many people under the LGBTQ+ umbrella, is inexorably tied to politics and legislation. The lived experience of a gay woman is dramatically different in Singapore, Tschad, France, Russia or the US and all of that has to do with politics. So the "We only target you if you talk politics" is a smokescreen. It would be fantastic if that wasn't the case, of course, but our societies are not at the point yet. Hell, in some countries it is political if you talk about your lived experience if you are anything else than sharing phenotype with the ruling majority. 😒 Hand up if you ever got called out for "getting political" if you not but shared your identity or talked about your daily life. And while that is like this "anywhere" this is not something to just accept and roll over. There needs to be a better way to do this OR if not to er on the side of _people_ . But that ofc is not twitchs fault exclusively.

[@AbadonBIack]

I mean this was entirely precipitated by a handful of streamers being antisemitic. I don't think it's been proven that anyone who talks about gay rights or issues will be hurt by this. It was very purposefully targeted to hurt a very specific type of content that was making advertisers uneasy, which was the Denims/Frogans/Hasans of the world that were purposefully doing things like grape apologia, attacking veterans, the whole antisemitic panel, etc. I think this will overall be positive for Twitch in the long run. It's awesome for people to support Palestine, or advocate for gay/trans rights/awareness, but it got to the point that people were using extreme views to farm viewership to the point they were saying really evil things to keep engagement high.

[@siph0r154]

@AbadonBIack I am sure that this is it's purpose/intention. everything else is bad for business. The issue is mostly edgecasing. As I said I don't necessarily blame Twitch here for the intention. All I wanted to point out is the fact that it is incredibly easy to see bad faith interpretations of this, since many, many queers have been shunned for _being too political_ just for existing. And it is also something a lot of unaffected people just tend to forget when looking on restrictions like this.

[@AbadonBIack]

@@siph0r154 That's fair. I interpreted your smokescreen comment as meaning LGBTQ censorship was an ulterior motive for the change. I think the good thing (at least in this specific issue you brought up) is that Twitch staff is *very* left leaning. Arguably they're a little too extremist (I'm a communist who supports Palestine but even I can see they've lost the plot a bit) but it does mean they would never allow for censorship of queer creators. If it did happen even unintentionally, it would be addressed almost immediately.

[@Noir_Magic]

Dude, I lost the notification cuz I was busy, been looking for this video since, KZbin was hiding it

[@litppunka.5732]

@Pirate Software Ad volume: I doubt this isn't retread for you of all people, but feels very relevant to this, and never got mentioned. FCC restrictions are based on Decibels, which are not directly related to human perception. Scummy ads will circumvent this by using a low Decibels, but high LUFS which is contextually much louder to the human ear.

[@cyberdemon1702]

@@litppunka.5732 wow, that’s pretty interesting if true. Guess I’ll follow up thanks for the info.

[@orocha630]

It is a real MASTER CLASS of twitch. I appreciate how you operate on it with full transparency, and full respect for your viewer, great job @Pirate Software!

[@nachomahn]

We (a big shoe brand) were warned by our MSSP and Proofpoint about a targeted effort to attack Twitch advertisers on Oct 25th, and our executives started getting thousands of emails a day and my WAF was getting ddos levels of script kiddie attacks on our ecomm sites. We totally pulled our twitch ads after that mess and are still waiting for it to calm down before restarting.

[@lilblackies]

@@nachomahn that's crazy. And it's even more crazy to know that this is from a group of fanboy dickriding a dude who is permaban from Twitch! 🙄😒🤦🏾‍♀️

[@dane2379]

the convo with Devin Nash was.....illuminating

[@SlamZanee]

I doubt this will get visibility but you're wrong Thor. I have 0 political tags, there is zero sexual themes, I stream rocket league and no man's sky, My Stream is all ages. I compared the last 15 days in October to the first 15 days of November and while my average views, my minutes watched, my ads per hour are all up around 10 to 20%. My revenue is down 50%. Now I'm only a thousand followers streamer with only 4000 hours streamed but I have been watching my numbers religiously for 2 years and I spent 10 years as a sales director. I'm not screaming the sky is falling, it already fell, even if not for you.

[@peregrinecovington4138]

KZbin is doing something similar that only affects smaller creators. It's a warning sign for the end of both platforms

[@chiseledmedal2634]

Hopefully more people see this comment as this is an important data point

[@kylenmaple4668]

I would talk with a Twitch representative before you jump to conclusions

[@leoriggs4405]

​@SlamZanee new York might be seen as political right now after the election.

[@kylenmaple4668]

@@SlamZanee I would just eliminate all geo-tags, UK and New York might be considered “political”

[@KDKalvinDrake]

I literally don't use Twitch because the ads break the player for me so often. It will desync the audio, and refreshing gives me another preroll, and then I can watch till the next break, where the audio breaks, then I refresh and get another preroll, then usually just close to site

[@ThatGuyNamedRick]

Corporate policy changes have always been Area of Effect in the worst way possible. Imagine trying to control a situation when the best thing you have is the ingredients to make a house fire... you or your team will inevitably create a house fire. You don't want to create a house fire, but when you're locked in a pitch dark tinderbox and given a bucket of gasoline and a box of matches and told "fix this situation" you're gonna have to dump the gas somewhere even if it's to use the bucket to fill it up with water pick up water, and you're gonna have to burn some matches to see in the dark. Something somewhere will go fwoosh.

[@Khotetsu]

Corporate policies around things like politics and sexual content are also always incredibly vague about what does or doesn't fit the description, and I think that's the biggest concern people should be having about the whole thing. Without a concise explanation of what tags can and can't affect your ad revenue, Twitch can apply the rules unevenly across people they like or don't like and hate groups can abuse the report system to hurt minority streamers. Somebody could decide to cut the ad revenue of someone using the "women" tag because "abortion is political" and it would take management stepping in to change the situation, even if nobody ever said a single thing about abortion.

[@drew_the_ghost6628]

What infuriates me, is that you can have potato internet, where stream has delay and is at 480p quality. But when an ad plays, there's 0 lag, highest sound and video quality. And this happens on YT and Twitch. Sometimes the YT page hasn't finished loading but the ad has loaded and is playing with specifications above. It just feels shameless 😂

[@TetraSky]

I find ads to be weird.. Like, why is a toilet paper company advertising to me in my region... I know they exist. Everybody does. It's not a new product. These type of ads make no sense to me. Ads for new movies or games, I can understand. Ads for existing products that have been available for years... I don't. The ad won't suddenly make us think "oh yeah, this product that is more expensive than the store brand, I totally need this".

[@Le3ktrill]

Some cool info about Bluesky. The 'Feeds' are separate servers maintained by the people who created them. They pay a fee and those within it can donate to help maintain the server. I can see the appeal for ads, but if the ecosystem is building on community support with an active community, I can see Bluesky delaying ads.

[@whyiwakeup6460]

“If you are talking about laws that is inherently political” “lgbtq people aren’t getting demonetized for being queer” while both are technically true, the fact that you can’t talk politics when your very existence is political, and your rights are at the whim of recent legislation. You have to ignore your oppression to be able to have money

[@loreaver3882]

what laws are there against lgbtq people>?

[@rootyful]

@@loreaver3882 Idaho H.538 Forced outing at schools, passed into law 04/08/2024 Louisiana H.B.121 Anti-trans law, ignoring student's identity, passed into law 06/19/2024 Alabama S.B.129 Anti-LGTB, prevents state agencies, local boards of education, and institutions of higher education from sponsoring diversity, equity, inclusion (DEI) programs or offices Tennessee H.B.1634, revises language that previously prohibited discimination based on family, social, or cultural background; or sexual orientation; passed into law 04/23/2024 That is only a handful, and not even mentioning the many, many more bills that are being petitioned for across the board

[@Duck_side]

​@@rootyfulthat's not what politics means in this case

[@rootyful]

@@Duck_side loreaver asked about laws against LGBT a people. what is more political than laws?? this is exactly what being queer being political means: people have made our existences into a political matter, a political platform. people are trying to police our existence away, rather than protecting it, or even just tolerating it. actual politicians making actual laws policing our actual queer existences is political. and us talking about who we are and why we are and why our existence needs to be respected and accepted is being called political in return. we didn't want our existence to be political - people that want queer people to not exist made it that way.

[@utopiandystopia1383]

Things are about to get much much worse with the dons cabinet picks

[@SakuraHarumin]

That last thing about being owned by advertisers and losing the freedom really made me think of Angry Video Game Nerd

[@sukairain48]

0:00 : PANNIKK 0:08 : Kalm

[@shawno8253]

Thanks for the Chapters my dude!

[@akuma2124]

Nice. Love that burrito index. Its up there with the big mac index. Also on the note of Burger king dropping $5 on advertising in streams. Was this about a year ago when Twitch had "hype chat" where you could essentially pin your message to the top of chat, and the time it stayed there for was based on how much money you put in? (kind of like super chats in KZbin live streams) .... I remember those, I heard that mods and streamers didnt even have the option to unpin/delete them. That's now evolved into bit cheers with pin ability, but can be taken down by streamer/mods if they want. Sucks to hear DK were being dumb and thinking people would be okay with it.

[@ChaosWolf3]

Social media lets panic spread super easy and there's a lot of misinformation as a result. Its actually really annoying.

[@mrman-yj3bn]

I'd reccomend everyone watches devin Nash's discussion with Thor on this. It's longer but it shows how Thor might not be 100% correct. Love the guy but I dislike how confident he is when he is unsure in reality

[@PhurPher]

Twitch will also tag/flag your own channel. So if you have ever been discussing things that are political, or you show too much skin, you could have got the axe. Thing is, with Trump as the coming president, ready to start swinging at all kinds of controversial stuff, and Musk wanting to go after advertisers for fishy stuff, and with the unpredictable nature of Trump(who knows how he comes to the conclusions he does), advertisers are TERRIFIED, and rightfully so. The absolute 10000% best possible decision they could make is to tighten WAY up, by the books, on board, dotting their t's and dotting their i's, taking ZERO risks. And even then they're probably going to suffer somehow.

[@Maul3rX]

Finally someone said it

[@TheJakeJackson]

Yeah this is a very strange video for that reason. Like his confidence in rejecting traditional journalistic information gathering methods... what? As a journalist you need to be able to protect some sources so that you can keep gathering information from them when they're in a situation where their candor would endanger them. You don't discount an article for having an anonymous source like he just did, that attitude means you'll never read any of the journalism that actually matters. What you do is look at the journalist themselves and assess their track record to determine whether or not there's a risk they're making it up. And then boiling his data down to "line going up in November, all is well". But is the line going up at a rate that is comparable to past years after accounting for channel growth? He's very confident that he's the most informed person on this subject despite the amount of gaps in his data.

[@KnightOfTheWired]

​@@PhurPhersomehow Trump is involved, don't know how but he is.

[@carlitosskater89]

​@@TheJakeJacksonalmost no one trust journalists if they don't source their quotes. Otherwise, it's the usual "trust me bro" source.

[@amysakalov6915]

I know a decently sized site on the internet that ran primarily on donations for a long time. Eventually though a new owner bought the site and implemented ads. From what I understand that spiked their revenue and allowed a bunch of development, but now it's back to being primarily funded by user support, though not just subscription/donations since part of the development was the creation of a few new features that allowed users to do things like guild posts. It's an extremely precarious position to be in.

[@Slaarduk]

I have mentioned this before, but I just overall hate ads. I don't trust them.

[@HunterMayer]

Can concur. We've had the same experience after a decade of throwing ads in apps.

[@CalCalodlost]

The reason people were worried about LGBTQ+ themes losing ads was from the Nov 1 Content Classification Guidelines which initially listed said themes as political. The guidelines have since been updated to clarify that discussing personal experiences are fine, the themes are only political if spoken in an inflammatory way. Have a nice day!

[@cosmonauthal7651]

@@InfiniteStyleroh yeah in todays day in age NO ONE cares about other peoples identities and totally just respect others life decisions. ESPECIALLY on the internet everyone is very open minded and respectful.

[@zoltarth]

So nice to see a reasonable non-reactionary take, so much better than everyone losing their mind and actually helps me know what's actually going on

[@otrotc]

It's good that they changed the wording about the LGBTQ+ tags. Even though I still think queer persons need to be able to advocate for their right to exist. Yes, that would be legislation but it's human rights. I don't think we should demonetize people for wanting to legally exist. Also, I'm not a streamer, so I don't know how this system works exactly, but how would twitch even differentiate between people who have LGBTQ adjacent tags because they talk about those politics and people having the tag because it's their identity. I don't see a way how, without manual classification, they would prevent queer people or allies getting demonetized simply because they have that tag, even without talking about the politics.

[@Karak-_-]

They can already legally exist, the same way you and I do. They want things on top of that. Plus, they can still talk about it, just on their own time and money.

[@otrotc]

@@Karak-_- 1. No, they can't legally exist as LGTBQ persons everywhere, and the way it's looking right now they might even loose the few rights they have again in the next years. 2. Lesbians and gays just want to be able to live their relationship openly, trans people just want to dress how they want and be referred to according to their gender. They literally just want to exist as a Lesbian, gay or trans person, or everything else, without constantly being harassed and suppressed.

[@hydeme]

​​​@@Karak-_-depending on the country no we cant bozo Edit for more info: gay marriage only recently got enacted in 2015 in the states and is still illegal in 64 states (countries) with some of the even criminalizing people just being a part of the lgbtq Getting the same treatments for someone cis vs someone whos trans is way harder to do sometimes impossible in some of the states as well as a good at least 10 year gap in garbage island as well as a load of other stuff Research before talking out of your a

[@Karak-_-]

@@hydeme Maybe they'll return to arguing for that, now that they'll have to do activism on their own time and money.

[@tranthien3932]

"How many viewers does it take to give Thor a burrito?" "Two viewers on average, apparently."

[@TalesStahl]

no sexual content? dont we forget the Ferret Butt scandal ?

[@janTasita]

6:13 I love how 'burrito stinks' and 'burrito stonks' are the exact same facial expression apart from the tears.

[@rapsody230]

isn't sexual content and political content a decently big slice of twitch? I get the point of the video, but if 20% of the entire platform is not going to get ads anymore it can be considered an adpocalipse.

[@chupperj3291]

To be an adpocolypse it would have to be a universal and significant hit to everyone An example is that there are sexual videos on youtube that do not get monetization, if they happened to be a larger portion of the platform, would it suddenly be an adpocolypse?

[@CountZakula]

I was on twitch before amazon, i'm a Partner. I had to quit for health reasons a couple years ago, and could've come back this year but didn't cuz i felt like if i didn't hustle things I didn't want to be a part of there was no space for things I loved. Using my digital game design degree, playing mods, making pvp builds, gaming, are hopefully gonna make a comeback.

[@kataseiko]

Reminds me of that thing with the factory tour in China that I saw. "This sounds a lot like a Black Mirror episode" - "Yes, isn't it wonderful?" - "Black Mirror is supposed to be horror." And I think we're seeing the same with 1984. It's something that's supposed to be avoided, yet we're on a slippery slope towards newspeak and a total loss of privacy.

[@Khotetsu]

We created the Torment Nexus from the famous sci-fi book, "Don't Invent the Torment Nexus"!

[@Hyatice]

I don't know if this applies to online ads vs TV but I saw a video recently that explained (legally) how the loud ads get away with it. Iirc, they basically have to stay within a certain dynamic range and the 'average' is more of a median. TV shows have 'quiet spots' and 'loud spots' so their median is somewhere in the middle between total silence and the loudest thing that happens in the whole show. Ads just set it to exactly the loudest they can and have no minima or maxima. So 'legally' it is no louder than the show youre watching, it just has no quiet spots.

[@MrTallformyheight]

Well, this aged well...

[@colbyley7008]

11:30 honestly I feel like a lot of the Snails House community would love to see these extra ways of supporting the stability of the rescue whether there's an adpocalypse or not

[@RandoCDN87]

Everyone was quick to blame Asmongold, but not themselves or the correct ones who have been left unchecked.

[@cosmonauthal7651]

Asmon is still wrong though. Why can you guys NEVER just admit that why do others always have to be thrown in as a “see they are worse”. Why?

[@EnderDragonoth]

I just want to say thank you so much for breaking this down in the detail you have done. Long live the burrito index!

[@K0J3Y]

I'm a big fan of your content, but I couldn't disagree more with your take on the Richard Lewis article. When Twitch employees talk to him and give him confidential documents, of course he can't give their names, because, idk, maybe they want to keep being Twitch employees ? Of course, when you have a Article with anonymous sources, there has to be trust that the journalist does his due diligence, and if I had to trust anyone with that kind of journalism, it would be Richard Lewis.

[@madmanwithaplan1826]

Nah man you can't think like that. All your heroes are monsters is a statement to live by. Everybody has their own unique and explicit personal failings and weaknesses. Even a person who has done great things in the past and has proven to me trustworthy and respectable can turn out to be a massive piece of shit it can happen to anybody. Take a look at the completionist right he raised all that money for charity and told all of his fans that it was going out to Charities he even listed several Charities that the money was going out to and while he didn't do anything illegal technically he refused to divulge that the money was in fact being kept in a trust that his family managed and own to be given out to charity at a later date. I don't know anything about that journalist but quite frankly you can never trust anything that you just hear you always always have to have confirmable sources otherwise it's just Rumors in hearsay

[@MadeUpNoun]

​@@madmanwithaplan1826 while thats good and all, in todays age whistle blowers are just not protected what so ever. am Australian and we are supposedly a more free country then america and yet a man here got sent to prison for leaking documents exposing Australian war crimes in Afghanistan , before any war criminals went to prison. your right we should take this information with a grain of salt but do you really think no one at twitch is leaking this stuff, twitch even had their internal chat logs leaked. either way time will tell because twitch at the very least is not doing to well with all its recent controversies

[@LodanSD]

I could have sworn it was earlier, but the CALM Act was passed in 2010! (Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation Act) But I do remember having to deal with those ads in the late 90s, while I was in middle/high school; I would always have to sit with the mute button ready, unless I was choosing to go to the bathroom during the commercials (and then I could hear them from down the hall!).

[@TheBman57]

You were wrong?????? YOU WERE WRONG LITERALLY FULL FACED WRONG

[@GEN47-27]

this has to be the fastest 1 hour ever... didnt realise i was listening for an hour!

[@madfreDz]

this aged like milk

[@natehull2397]

?

[@James-u1y]

Its pretty much going according to last year with minor changes though, I think a couple places threatened to pull ads but it seems those as sports got bought up anyways lol

[@skyler1469]

Shorts for ferrets would be lovely

[@Korkapotomis]

Bad take. It's happening. Do some real digging.

[@RainbowQueen23]

My wife and I love seeing the ferrets btw we have them on a tv we don't use in our living room and it's super nice to walk in and see them sleepin or runing around reminds me of the ones I grew up with ❤

[@RespectTheSourceMaterial]

I have to say it's not the viewers fault who don't know how the industry works. This all started based on what top streamers have said. Asmongold has made a ton of videos about the adpocalypse, hasan not only said that it's happening but he also blamed asmongold for it, ludwig created a youtube video with 1 million views in which he acknowledged that it's real. When the top streamers in the world say that it's happening it's not the fault of social media or the average joe who don't know how the industry works when they take their word for fact.

[@Demortra]

Not doing your own research is indeed the fault of the person. Asmongold is some dude, Hasan is some dude, Ludwig is some dude. Because they are popular does not make them correct, nor should they be believable, people wanted it to be real, so to them it is real. If they have evidence then sure.

[@thedivine5897]

It is totally the viewers fault. People following & idolizing "famous" or "popular" people is not inherently a good thing; and taking the word of these people's in their places on large platforms is up to each and every one of us. And as to knowledge? In the current modern world, it is a CHOICE to be ignorant. There is tons of access to all manner of information & knowledge. It is up to each person to seek & absorb it for themselves, or not. Taking these entertainers words as gospel is just as foolish as listening to celebrities opinions on things... Or, really, any person who is in any type of **perceived** position of power. Whether a 'government' official, or a 'doctor' or 'scientist', or twitch streamer, or whatever, etc etc... If people are taking anyone else's word as fact, that is THEIR choice to place belief & trust unto these people; ultimately, it is the giving up of ones own power. This is of course very common & the most popular occurrence; most do not want to have to learn / know things if they don't have to. It's easier to consume slop-entertainment-distractions than to seek out actual information or knowledge ... Lot easier to just trust the word of some character one enjoys watching and following, lol... Tis a sad state. But it is the state. Of course there are outliers; not EVERYONE is like this. But it is a majority occurrence, unfortunately. Ignorance is a choice. Being knowledgeable is a choice. Social Media / online world is a toxic pool of idiocy, generally speaking. Taking responsibility/ admitting to ones own actual standing, in all aspects / avenues, is one of the hardest things for a person to do; and consequently, quite rare. Most cannot face the truth, nor handle it...