1/ The backlash to Twitch's Ninja NYE ads channels the scrutiny around Twitch's inconsistent handling of large vs small streamers and inadvertently exposes another tier: the companies that buy ad campaigns from Twitch. They are functionally immune to even those standards.
2/ Twitch's different policies for ad buyers and individual streamers will continue to break as individual streamers start to behave more like event companies renting their channels to brands. It's inevitable as streamers continue to command audiences larger than some events.
3/ Here's a little background: You hear "tentpole content" a lot around content platforms. The idea is basically pay for a big flashy event and use that to push your other hooks. New show premieres right after the Super Bowl, for example.
4/ Live content is especially ephemeral, and tentpole events don't convert as well as individual streamers because their content isn't meant to entice users to stick around. They're live for the event and then silent for up to a year. They don't care about daily viewership.
5/ Contrast this with individual channels where everything is meant to hook you into their ecosystem as a daily participant: stream schedule, upcoming events, social media, et al. Each channel has a slate of engagement options designed to deepen and maintain that relationship.
6/ If you're a brand, it's more efficient to tap into that existing mechanism by dual-streaming the event on the streamers' channel(s) and yours. You get better overall viewership. Fortnite does this with their tournaments, and it was a core strategy for MLG.tv.
7/ So, if your event doesn't intend to sell ads on consolidated channel(s), this is a win for all. Your brand gets more exposure, streamers get a boost from all the cross-promotion, viewers don't have to switch channels, and new viewers land on channels optimized for retention.
8/ Channel switching is a bigger deal than most realize. All the hours spent building in-jokes and commemorating them with chat emotes evaporate when a longtime viewer goes to an event channel and can't even talk because their sub doesn't work. It's no longer their community.
9/ So the strategy of pushing event advertising to Ninja's channel is a good thing. It's what everyone wants. And since Twitch already runs advertising for other events as part of campigns, I can see whoever put this together rationalizing "It's an event. It'll be fine."
10/ I guarantee the ads weren't even a focus of the deal. Just one more "value add" on a PO without running it through a Community sanity check. The sales guy isn't likely to mess with their commission after the ink is dry so community input gets pushed aside to book revenue.
11/ You have to go through the sales team to buy direct ads and the minimum spend is high for an individual. Similar sites price US direct at $40+ CPM, so the core assumption is it works or else it wouldn't be that expensive. But individual streamers can't buy advertising at all.
12/ So Twitch has a channel growth product that works. But you can't use it unless you're already big enough that a brand will stream to your channel AND spend enough to get advertising on your behalf. It's opacity and favoritism, two consistently common criticisms of Twitch.
13/ BTW, Ninja's innocent in all this. He didn't buy those ads. It's Twitch's fault they let this fester for as long as they have. Another consistently common criticism.
14/ This can't easily be solved because it involves money and driving revenue is now Twitch's main goal. It requires realigning product and sales processes around community, something Twitch has steadfastly refused to do. We'll see more cracks like this as they become more Amazon
15/ It means infusing community into all functions as a Value. They can't only hire native Twitch users, so they need to centralize community knowledge and actually make community an equal stakeholder and hard gate on launch plans. If it hurts the community, it shouldn't ship.
16/ I'm biased towards community and intentionally simplifying that framework. A real-world solution would definitely be more nuanced and balance that rather lofty vision with real-world business objectives. But right now community is not even considered in the conversation.
17/17 You'll likely see Twitch continue to hit talking points about listening to community feedback or being more transparent or communicative. Structurally, they aren't set up to meaningfully act on this and it's unlikely that will change in light of their new focus.
