BIG EDIT: As many have pointed out, my math isn't perfect - costs over time decrease etc etc. My point is that no matter what the content is, it costs something to produce - adblock MASSIVELY reduces the revenue generated from ads, and this is especially harmful to smaller streams that don't have other methods to generate money
There have been a couple of topics on various social medias on the last couple of days regarding stream ads and, more specifically, ad block. I had responded to a few but think a longer blog would be a better format.
People who use adblock & don't subscribe / donate are not watching for free. They are costing the vast majority of content producers money to entertain them.
May seem extreme right? But let's look at the facts. *note, this is based on small and medium sized streams - those with large commercial sponsors may have different experiences*
Let's get one this straight here, ANY content production costs money to stream. The better quality the stream, the more money it will cost to produce. So what does it cost, not including "time" - below is a rough breakdown of my expenses. I am only including content I produce off my own back, nothing I get paid to do.
* High quality internet connection £40/month * Electricity for my PC, lighting, monitors - call it 1kW per hour for easy math. (13p/h) * Equipment (in the last year I have spent around £2500 minimum) * Any prize money for events I put on myself
Now lets look at "free" content I produce, say I only cast Go4SC2 monday - every week for a year. That is 52 shows, 4 hours ish per show
Now, lets work purely on advertising revenue to cover those costs. To put it in easier terms, per hour of broadcast I would need to generate £14.40 (if I only did Go4SC2 on a Monday night) for this to be cost neutral.
I cannot give figures on CPM's, but you can all speculate how many ad impressions it would take to make that much money.
There is plenty to argue in the way of I do it for fun, I enjoy it etc etc. Obviously I do and that is why I am happy to spend my time and effort casting and making content. However, if I am watching 4 hours of content from someone for free, someone who is using 4 hours of their evening to provide me with entertainment, the least I can do is watch 3-5mins of adverts an hour in the hope it wont cost them money as well as their time.
If you went to the cinema for example, 3 hours there (which has pre-roll adverts too) would cost me around £9. However, production quality is far far higher. Watching a TV show (live, not streamed) = at least 10mins of adverts per hour.
Note: as I said before, this is all based on a hypothetical situation for a small to medium sized stream running with recent production value. Obviously many other factors play into revenue generation and costs - especially on a per hour basis!
The facts you're stating are sound. But what is the point you're making?
You're not a professional streamer - you're a hobby streamer. Hobbys cost money - breaking news. Expecting your bi weekly golf round to be break even is .... obviously not smart? The fact that you're providing value (content) with that hobby doesn't change it's nature and shouldn't give you any financial expectation.
Obviously you're aware of this and most others are too. A monetary calculation (especially one that basically proves that you're paying absolutely normal hobby-money for this) won't change anyone's mind about adblock.
Good content that people love and identify with will always get the support it deserves. As soon as a community develops, they are probably going to turn off adblock for you, especially if you ask them personally. And it's well known that people are willing to donate and subscribe to their streamers of choice.
And lastly, I obviously don't support adblock. But there are 134084318 good arguments for turning it off / whitelisting sites like TL and Twitch, and now you added one more. But arguments never convinced someone in a matter of convenience like this one - it has to become felt and intuitive.
Sounds like Twitch pays now much much less than 2011?!
I remember people asked Millenium.Stephano why he didnt play Go4SC2 and other online cups anymore. He responded "I make much more money with streaming than winning 100€", consider that he didnt stream ~8h at a stretch.
Are you claiming that you wouldn't have a decent internet connection or electricity if you didn't stream? How can you claim that this is a 'cost of streaming'? Also, how do you calculate the huge sum of 2500 pounds for equipment? Computer parts? A microphone? Yearly? I'd love to hear where that huge sum of money comes from.
You should become a lobbyist maddels, combining nice facts with wrong statements
These adblockconsumers like me dont cost you money at all because you knew beforehand which percentage of your viewers would watch your show with adblock turned on. Your real problem is that you would like too atleast break even, defining problems is key to solving them. Now, if you want to atleast break even, i'd say cut costs or get more revenue in whatever solution(s) seems best.
So you need a 2500 pound computer per year and your internet exclusively and only to cast Go4SC2 Monday? Solid calculation. And if it is really true... Well.. you better change your hobby profession as it surely wont cover those expenses.
I don't think his point was the actual cost of production, only that it does cost money (and time), and as viewers we should respect the cost.
Although I don't entirely disagree with him, I find this post will probably receive some negative backlash.
For one thing, many others have already pointed out the flaws in his calculations (i.e. equipment cost was necessary regardless of streaming content; equipment cost will go down the longer its used, etc.).
As well, it comes off as kind of whiney. I don't think it is the appropriate way to encourage viewers to turn off adblock.
On June 20 2014 06:38 madals wrote: People who use adblock & don't subscribe / donate are not watching for free. They are costing the vast majority of content producers money to entertain them.
I took this as your thesis, but you don't ever back it up. How are viewers who don't partake in ads costing you money? If a particular cheepskate viewer were to stop viewing, would your expenses suddenly go down? I guess indirectly you could argue that the burden goes on to the streaming service, which eventually gets passed on to you in decreased earnings from other viewers, but that would be kind of grasping at straws.
I guess the point is "Don't watch my stream for free... at least watch some ads to help cover the costs of providing this service to you."
If you have high fixed costs (equipment), you need a large volume (hours streaming) to make your "business" more profitable. Also I'm pretty sure you'd have the same PC even if you were not streaming so...
People consistently watching twitch streams (with ad-only income) with adblock on are using this tool in an unfair way. Its a parasitic behaviour. There are tons of services and tools (including adblock) that are free, but most of them would not be out there without donations or ad income. So if you keep adblock on all the time, and never donate (or subscribe, or something else) you are a parasite. Taking advantage of other people good will.
Not that I actually know your content, but I assume this is some sc2 related stream?
What is your point? You're giving a hypothetical example of what?
None of your costs are related to your streaming exclusively, unless you have a separate pc and internet connection for your non-streaming related life. Your equipment seems redic expensive, what are you buying an alienware every year?
Adblock isn't costing you money, that wasn't money you had to begin with. You can only calculate revenue from viewers you can actually presume to get money from in the first place. When you calculate market-share you don't calculate people who don't buy your products in other sectors either.
If donations/subscriptions don't cover your costs, maybe you should reconsider why you're streaming, is it for your own enjoyment or are you trying to run a business on this?
Adblock is a choice, and the choice is not to let every marketing firm on the planet spam your brain with junk, if users decide to pay for content that is their choice, you cannot 'force' ads upon someone nor expect it to be a given source of revenue.
If you don't want to rely on adverts then create a pay to view subscription feature, you'll instantly find out how many people actually give 3shits about your stream or not and then can see if its a profitable model.
Glad to see a great discussion going on here, will try and address some of the points! Before I do though, the OP was all about a pretty extreme example - I am fortunate enough that through paid work, revenue, sponsors etc my casting isn't costing me money. Even if it did, I would be able to support the costs. The point of this post isn't that I am in a terrible position, but that many streamers are not in such a fortunate place as I am.
Out of interest, out of the £2500, how much would you have spent anyway on your equipment if you weren't doing any casting?
In the last year, probably around £500max. Looking at the stuff I bought, around £2000 of it is exclusively bought for casting / streaming.
Now, if you want to atleast break even, i'd say cut costs or get more revenue in whatever solution(s) seems best.
I do break even (and make a small amount), this post wasn't specifically for the 1st person, but people (streamers) who may not be in such a fortunate position. But lets look at your points as they are quite a common thought process
- reduce costs: could definitely be done, I don't need a brilliant mic and 1080p/60fps casts to stream. But, nowadays this pretty much the benchmark of "good" stream quality. Anything less and people complain, which would reduce a streams ability to.....
- generate more revenue: How is this done if people are using adblock? With some major sites showing 50%+ useage of adblock, that is probably the biggest increase in potential revenue there is for the majority of streamers. While donations / subscribers / sponsors are always going to give a huge hike to revenue, it isn't something that is within the reach of the vast majority.
I have run out of time replying right now, but will be back later on if people want to keep discussing
On June 20 2014 16:29 madals wrote: Glad to see a great discussion going on here, will try and address some of the points! Before I do though, the OP was all about a pretty extreme example - I am fortunate enough that through paid work, revenue, sponsors etc my casting isn't costing me money. Even if it did, I would be able to support the costs. The point of this post isn't that I am in a terrible position, but that many streamers are not in such a fortunate place as I am.
Now, if you want to atleast break even, i'd say cut costs or get more revenue in whatever solution(s) seems best.
I do break even (and make a small amount), this post wasn't specifically for the 1st person, but people (streamers) who may not be in such a fortunate position. But lets look at your points as they are quite a common thought process
- reduce costs: could definitely be done, I don't need a brilliant mic and 1080p/60fps casts to stream. But, nowadays this pretty much the benchmark of "good" stream quality. Anything less and people complain, which would reduce a streams ability to.....
- generate more revenue: How is this done if people are using adblock? With some major sites showing 50%+ useage of adblock, that is probably the biggest increase in potential revenue there is for the majority of streamers. While donations / subscribers / sponsors are always going to give a huge hike to revenue, it isn't something that is within the reach of the vast majority.
I have run out of time replying right now, but will be back later on if people want to keep discussing
I'd love to see a list of the gear you bought for £2000 that you exclusively need to cast/stream.
On June 20 2014 15:04 urboss wrote: Can someone explain to me: Why is there no way for twitch.tv to deal with adblockers? This should be an easy problem to solve...
On June 20 2014 16:48 Xorphene wrote: I'd love to see a list of the gear you bought for £2000 that you exclusively need to cast/stream.
Sure, brand new streaming PC - £1700. My old PC was able to play all the games I like maxed out, but couldn't stream 1080p/60fps while doing that. It also struggled to locally record while streaming 720/60. Also worth noting, I got about a 20% discount on this PC thanks to some sponsorship / promotion.
New microphone set up: RODE podcaster + stand + shock mount + pop filter = just over £300. Again, I already had a mic but it picked up a lot of plosive sounds and didn't have the best quality - this new mic will hopefully make the viewer experience better My old mic was fine for skype etc for general gaming.
The other £500 was various pieces of hardware / software that I use for things other things as well rather than exclusively casting.
Obviously, these costs are not annual costs and are higher than most years. If I had been on a really tight budget I could have probably found some cheaper solutions, but I am not sure if they would have given the same end product.
Lastly, as I have edited to the top of the OP: As many have pointed out, my math isn't perfect - costs over time decrease etc etc. My point is that no matter what the content is, it costs something to produce - adblock MASSIVELY reduces the revenue generated from ads, and this is especially harmful to smaller streams that don't have other methods to generate money
On June 20 2014 15:04 urboss wrote: Can someone explain to me: Why is there no way for twitch.tv to deal with adblockers? This should be an easy problem to solve...
They can but they dont do it because viewers will be decreased extremely.
If you don't want to rely on adverts then create a pay to view subscription feature, you'll instantly find out how many people actually give 3shits about your stream or not and then can see if its a profitable model.
This is something I have often thought about doing, but there are a few problems with it. Mainly, for various reasons not everyone is able to pay for content, they may not have the money or the ability (no paypal account, etc). For me, I do not want to exclude people who love eSports as much as I do from being able to view content.
On June 20 2014 15:04 urboss wrote: Can someone explain to me: Why is there no way for twitch.tv to deal with adblockers? This should be an easy problem to solve...
They can but they dont do it because viewers will be decreased extremely.
That is not an argument. There is a shitton of ads on TV, that doesnt prevent people from watching it. Would you stop watching GSL just because there are two ads every hour?
I can't see why twitch.tv cannot stream the ads over their server so that the ads become undistinguishable from real content. They need to set this up with the ad-provider of course.
On June 20 2014 06:38 madals wrote: People who use adblock & don't subscribe / donate are not watching for free. They are costing the vast majority of content producers money to entertain them.
I took this as your thesis, but you don't ever back it up. How are viewers who don't partake in ads costing you money? If a particular cheepskate viewer were to stop viewing, would your expenses suddenly go down? I guess indirectly you could argue that the burden goes on to the streaming service, which eventually gets passed on to you in decreased earnings from other viewers, but that would be kind of grasping at straws.
I guess the point is "Don't watch my stream for free... at least watch some ads to help cover the costs of providing this service to you."
To further your reading of the situation, it's like setting up a toll-booth with a well-known and widely-adopted detour and claiming that everyone that takes the detour (instead of paying the toll) costs you money.
Perhaps even more to the point: if you rely on ads for income, you are automatically deciding that users who use adblock etc. are not your target audience. Sure you can occasionally change someone's mind, but people who block ads will generally keep blocking ads. You'd never have gotten money from them anyway, and statistically speaking you won't get money from them in the future either.
If you're ad-based, you're trying to reach and appeal to users who watch ads. If you try to appeal to e.g. a very tech-savvy audience, a very high percentage of them are going to use ad-blocking techniques - and you will need to pursue a different revenue stream.
The way how I see content producers is that they are providing something for the community that they want and get rewarded for it. good example of this would be day9 who started his show that about stratigy and improvement which there was little content on at that time in audio/video.
I think the biggest thing that some people don't understand is that the community OWS YOU NOTHING! so if you want to make content producing your income expect a long road of growing your fanbase organicly.
To further your reading of the situation, it's like setting up a toll-booth with a well-known and widely-adopted detour and claiming that everyone that takes the detour (instead of paying the toll) costs you money.
Not at all, it is like setting up a toll-booth and getting annoyed at people driving straight through it, on your toll road without paying.
On June 20 2014 15:04 urboss wrote: Can someone explain to me: Why is there no way for twitch.tv to deal with adblockers? This should be an easy problem to solve...
They can but they dont do it because viewers will be decreased extremely.
That is not an argument. There is a shitton of ads on TV, that doesnt prevent people from watching it. Would you stop watching GSL just because there are two ads every hour?
I can't see why twitch.tv cannot stream the ads over their server so that the ads become undistinguishable from real content. They need to set this up with the ad-provider of course.
You are very wrong sir. Germany noticed that if channel1 is showing ads, bigger part of viewers switch asap to other channel and come back after ~8minutes (per ad takes 8minutes). Thats why every channel show ads in the same time (~1min difference) for few years. Well, it seems you are in Austria, you should have access to german channels, try. dat German efficiency I know.
You are right, ads run at the same time for TV stations that belong to the same media group.
However, this is not an argument as to why twitch allows adblockers. If ads were such a big issue, there wouldn't be any ads at all on TV. Likewise, if ads were such a big issue on twitch, there wouldn't be any ads at all.
If as a viewer you have the alternatives to watch Stephano with ads or not watching anything at all, which one are you gonna choose?
If there is quality content, ads are an important way to monetize it. Ads are the only reason why most of the content on the internet is free. Removing the ads (in the form of adblockers) will eventually result in removing the content.
People can choose between quality content with ads or no content at all. There is no need to allow AdBlock!
On June 20 2014 15:04 urboss wrote: Can someone explain to me: Why is there no way for twitch.tv to deal with adblockers? This should be an easy problem to solve...
They can but they dont do it because viewers will be decreased extremely.
That is not an argument. There is a shitton of ads on TV, that doesnt prevent people from watching it. Would you stop watching GSL just because there are two ads every hour?
I can't see why twitch.tv cannot stream the ads over their server so that the ads become undistinguishable from real content. They need to set this up with the ad-provider of course.
wrong, I find ads so annoying on TV (mostly US channels) that I just wait for someone to upload the show and watch it on my computer slightly later (even though, I have those US channels on my TV directly). I mean 4 or 5 ads for a 20 minutes episode is downright annoying!
Twitch is laggy for me, and I dont want to add ads to that problem. For SPL on youtube I turn adbolck off, but for any twitch stream I do not.
On June 20 2014 20:00 urboss wrote: You are right, ads run at the same time for TV stations that belong to the same media group.
However, this is not an argument as to why twitch allows adblockers. If ads were such a big issue, there wouldn't be any ads at all on TV. Likewise, if ads were such a big issue on twitch, there wouldn't be any ads at all.
If as a viewer you have the alternatives to watch Stephano with ads or not watching anything at all, which one are you gonna choose?
If there is quality content, ads are an important way to monetize it. Ads are the only reason why most of the content on the internet is free. Removing the ads (in the form of adblockers) will eventually result in removing the content.
People can choose between quality content with ads or no content at all. There is no need to allow AdBlock!
tbh tv ads are far from beeing as intrusive as internet ads ppl ad block for confort
I've been meaning to ask this for a while, but never got around to it, so I might as well post it here.
Tech people: is there any reason why someone can't create an adblock program that blocks the ad for the viewer, but still "counts" the ad as having been viewed on the advertiser's end? It seems to me like a win-win solution, but is it technically possible? If not, why not?
On June 20 2014 20:22 FuRong wrote: I've been meaning to ask this for a while, but never got around to it, so I might as well post it here.
Tech people: is there any reason why someone can't create an adblock program that blocks the ad for the viewer, but still "counts" the ad as having been viewed on the advertiser's end? It seems to me like a win-win solution, but is it technically possible? If not, why not?
you do realise that what you propose actually beats the purpose of advertising ?
Twitch is laggy for me, and I dont want to add ads to that problem. For SPL on youtube I turn adbolck off, but for any twitch stream I do not.
The reason Twitch is laggy is likely down to not enough infrastructure to send you the video. To get money infrastructure they need money and their sole form of income is advertising. By turning on adblock, you make twitch worse?
To further your reading of the situation, it's like setting up a toll-booth with a well-known and widely-adopted detour and claiming that everyone that takes the detour (instead of paying the toll) costs you money.
Not at all, it is like setting up a toll-booth and getting annoyed at people driving straight through it, on your toll road without paying.
I realize it's hard for you to step back and take a dispassionate look at this issue. What you're missing is that driving through your toll booth without paying and taking the detour are exactly the same thing as far as you're concerned. The exact same sequence of events happen. People get to The Destination (whatever that is) without giving up anything in return.
You simply should not be relying on people that use ad-blocking mechanisms to... not use those mechanisms. Would you open an extremely expensive boutique shop in a statistically very poor part of a city? Would you complain that people that came into your store interested in your goods but left without buying anything are too poor? It's the same kind of business logic. There is a demographic you're looking for. Focus on that demographic. Trying to convince other demographics that they're living life the wrong way is going to meet with limited success.
Sounds like you think I use adblock? Wrong. I have complained that TakeTV doesnt send ads during breaks.
You should think about other side. If you see HuK, you see EG & Monster Energy Logo etc. If Twitch makes Adblock useless and suddenly Huk or Demuslim only have 100 viewers, I dont think it is a great thing for Twitch and EG, Monster etc.
To further your reading of the situation, it's like setting up a toll-booth with a well-known and widely-adopted detour and claiming that everyone that takes the detour (instead of paying the toll) costs you money.
Not at all, it is like setting up a toll-booth and getting annoyed at people driving straight through it, on your toll road without paying.
I realize it's hard for you to step back and take a dispassionate look at this issue. What you're missing is that driving through your toll booth without paying and taking the detour are exactly the same thing as far as you're concerned. The exact same sequence of events happen. People get to The Destination (whatever that is) without giving up anything in return.
You simply should not be relying on people that use ad-blocking mechanisms to... not use those mechanisms. Would you open an extremely expensive boutique shop in a statistically very poor part of a city? Would you complain that people that came into your store interested in your goods but left without buying anything are too poor? It's the same kind of business logic. There is a demographic you're looking for. Focus on that demographic. Trying to convince other demographics that they're living life the wrong way is going to meet with limited success.
Twitch is laggy for me, and I dont want to add ads to that problem. For SPL on youtube I turn adbolck off, but for any twitch stream I do not.
The reason Twitch is laggy is likely down to not enough infrastructure to send you the video. To get money infrastructure they need money and their sole form of income is advertising. By turning on adblock, you make twitch worse?
Turbo and Subscriptions.
Foreword on Adblock I agree, using Adblock sucks. Either watch the stream and watch ads/use turbo/subscribe to the channel (if possible), or don't watch at all. Using Adblock is just leaching.
The Problem With Ads My issue is with the ads themselves. On a lot of sites, the ads take up more bandwidth than the content I want to view (I'm pretty confident TL falls into this with some of their video-like ads), which is just absurd.
When on a stream: I choose how I watch my content - I can choose the quality, I can choose the volume, etc. I also want to choose how I watch my ads. As it stands, my stream can be on quietly and suddenly a blaring ad comes out and scares the crap out of me (MLG I'm looking at you here). Sometimes I'm on shonky internet and I can only watch a stream at low/med. Suddenly a 720p ad turns up and lags all over the place while being unskippable (nothing like having a 30 second ad take 3 minutes to play) or worse crashes my browser (some ads have done this) and suddenly I'm stuck watching it again because I've reloaded the stream and can't do so without watching another laggy/crashy ad.
What Makes an Ad Bad? Ads themselves are fine as long as they're not obstrusive. Passive ads, or ads that follow my stream settings are fine. However, this is rarely the case and is getting to the point where the ad is OVER TWO MINUTES LONG unless I get up and interact with it to turn it off.
Internet TV vs "Regular" TV When watching regular TV, there are, as you say, 10 minutes of ads per hour at least. However, usually they are at well defined breaks. Either: - The show flat out stops and restarts, meaning you're guaranteed to miss nothing - Nothing happens of note in the break - The show itself continues in a small picture in picture format (I think there's an NZ F1 show that does this).
The ads themselves: - Are at the volume you set your TV to - Don't break your TV if you still have a CRT TV (that's the closest analogy I can think of to super high bandwidth ad killing my internet) - Are short and non-interactive
Also, when I turn on the TV, the first thing I see is NOT AN AD. It's the show. The first ad I see is a scheduled ad when the show breaks, not one that shows because I've been watching for 15 seconds. The ones Twitch shows at that time are often the 2.5 minute long ones. These suck when you're coming home from work and want to catch how a game is doing.
Of course, with TV channels, they don't get paid PER AD WATCHED. Advertisers pay the channel to play the ad before the ad campaign goes on air.
The Argument For Adblock The argument for Adblock is similar to that of the argument for piracy in that using Adblock makes my viewing experience better. As long as this is true, people will use ad blocking scripts (some will use it anyway, but more will use it as long as the ads are obnoxious).
Should I Have Ads Integrated In My Stream? Something DH streams do is have sponsor ads playing in the stream. This is great for you, but means Twitch gets no money (as far as I'm aware) from this. However, I was watching GSL and they had twitch ads playing over their ads! I've no idea how that's worked out. In all I would avoid that, unless you've agreed a cut to twitch for doing that.
What About Donations? I think that's largely the same. Twitch gets nothing from that, either.
So What Can I Do? In short, I don't know. You're not in control of the ads your streaming host plays and, as long as the ads are loud, bandwidth heavy and interactive, people are going to want to make them go away. It sucks that, at the moment, you are getting punished for people turning their ads off.
This Post Was Pretty Pointless Yeah, largely. Sorry. I can sympathise with the frustrations of losing out to adblock, but the ads are so annoying the only other option is not to watch at all. There are only so many times I can get up to make a cup of tea with a 150 second ad for a cereal goes on at full volume.
Twitch is laggy for me, and I dont want to add ads to that problem. For SPL on youtube I turn adbolck off, but for any twitch stream I do not.
The reason Twitch is laggy is likely down to not enough infrastructure to send you the video. To get money infrastructure they need money and their sole form of income is advertising. By turning on adblock, you make twitch worse?
When on a stream: I choose how I watch my content - I can choose the quality, I can choose the volume, etc. I also want to choose how I watch my ads. As it stands, my stream can be on quietly and suddenly a blaring ad comes out and scares the crap out of me (MLG I'm looking at you here).
THIS!!!! everybody who I talked to has this problem aswell. if they fixed this i wouldn't mind turning of addblock
The very idea of advertisement is perverse and we owe it to ourselves to avoid it. You can support content without watching adds and if you run adds that people cant avoid a huge number of people will avoid your content and you will never get any revenue.
Compare the advertising in streams to television. A huge number of us don't watch television and any of that content we do watch tends to be streamed or recorded with the adverts cut out. Why would we want to make things worse because that is the traditional method of monetizing content?
Digital media is a chance to tell advertising to get the fuck out of our lives and instead you beg for it.
Here is how it works: Twitch has a contract with an ad-provider that serves ads on demand. That means, the ad server is on a different domain than the twitch streaming server.
This is why the ad experience is so crappy on twitch. And that is also why AdBlock can block the ads in the first place. All AdBlock does is to block certain web domains that are known to serve ads.
Now, if twitch were to stream the ads from their own server, they could control the ad experience and AdBlock would have no way of distinguishing ads from real content.
This is ridiculously easy to set up and would be a win-win-win situation for twitch, for the ad-provider and for the streamers. So I have no clue why they are not doing it.
People use adblock because they don't like ads. If you can prevent them from using adblock they might just avoid your stream altogether. Given that your marginal cost for these viewers is almost exactly zero I don't see the point in pursuing this outcome.
Unless you feel strongly about it for moral reasons or whatever. Just realize that if people chose not to disable adblock for your stream or site they probably don't care about it that much. So if you give them a choice to watch adds or leave they will be vastly more likely to leave.
Well, twitch can leave the decision to include ads to the streamer:
If a streamer decides not to put ads in his streams so as not to aggravate viewers, that in turn means that he will also not make money from the stream.
But mind this: If it is QUALITY CONTENT, people are always gonna watch it, no matter if there are ads or not.
People watch super bowl or World Cup despite the ads. People would watch the top SC2 streamers despite the ads, because it is quality content.
And I'm gonna make the bold assessment that 98% of the SC2 streamers do NOT produce quality content. So yes, for 98% of the streamers it would probably mean that they have to close down. But anyway good riddance I suppose.
On June 21 2014 02:09 urboss wrote: Well, twitch can leave the decision to include ads to the streamer:
If a streamer decides not to put ads in his streams so as not to aggravate viewers, that in turn means that he will also not make money from the stream.
But mind this: If it is QUALITY CONTENT, people are always gonna watch it, no matter if there are ads or not.
People watch super bowl or World Cup despite the ads. People would watch the top SC2 streamers despite the ads, because it is quality content.
And I'm gonna make the bold assessment that 98% of the SC2 streamers do NOT produce quality content. So yes, for 98% of the streamers it would probably mean that they have to close down. But anyway good riddance I suppose.
You're right, people watch the Super Bowl and the World Cup despite the ads, but if they had the option to simply eliminate the ads do you think they wouldn't because they think the content is good? Hell no. If you're a guy who thinks 98% of sc2 streams don't produce quality content, then go watch something else, but for people who actually watch and appreciate the content, and only have to show that appreciation by muting a 15 second ad every half hour, this shouldn't be too much to ask. Especially for a caster like Madals who is going to run ads between games and you won't miss anything. You can just alt tab to another stream, or mute it and go make a sandwich, or complain to your buddies about annoying ads. By the time you're done, the stream will be back up and running for your convenience.
Maybe there is some misunderstanding, I'm actually in favor of ads. Ads are the building blocks of free content on the internet.
However, the viewer should not be able to make the decision to view ads or not view ads. The viewer should be forced to view ads! Without ads we would be left with crappy content only, because no one could afford producing quality stuff anymore.
I'm already bombarded by ads while watching sports and going outside, I don't need my home entertainment filled with redundant advertisements, which majority of them are rather boring. Most of the twitch streamers don't make much revenue from ads anyway, the subscription service and ridiculously generous donations is reason they can sustain themselves. And there are also many more technically incapable viewers out there to replace the meager losses caused by my choice of blocking 99% of online advertisements.
On June 21 2014 02:09 urboss wrote: Well, twitch can leave the decision to include ads to the streamer:
If a streamer decides not to put ads in his streams so as not to aggravate viewers, that in turn means that he will also not make money from the stream.
But mind this: If it is QUALITY CONTENT, people are always gonna watch it, no matter if there are ads or not.
People watch super bowl or World Cup despite the ads. People would watch the top SC2 streamers despite the ads, because it is quality content.
And I'm gonna make the bold assessment that 98% of the SC2 streamers do NOT produce quality content. So yes, for 98% of the streamers it would probably mean that they have to close down. But anyway good riddance I suppose.
You're right, people watch the Super Bowl and the World Cup despite the ads, but if they had the option to simply eliminate the ads do you think they wouldn't because they think the content is good? Hell no. If you're a guy who thinks 98% of sc2 streams don't produce quality content, then go watch something else, but for people who actually watch and appreciate the content, and only have to show that appreciation by muting a 15 second ad every half hour, this shouldn't be too much to ask. Especially for a caster like Madals who is going to run ads between games and you won't miss anything. You can just alt tab to another stream, or mute it and go make a sandwich, or complain to your buddies about annoying ads. By the time you're done, the stream will be back up and running for your convenience.
We shouldn't have to ask or be asking. If people receiving the ads aren't watching them then it's a waste of everybody's time except the streamer who is earning dishonest money
There is adverting on the clothes people wear, there is advertising on the street, walls, books, bums, radio, television, sounds, shops and all sorts of places you wouldn't expect it. It exists to exploit how your brain works to influence your behavior and get your cash. Fuck it and fuck anyone that works in it. I will gladly throw money at things i like and i accept that you need to spread awareness of things for people to find the things they like but the advertisement industry goes way to far and shame on anyone trying to encourage it's behavior especially if you are doing it out of anything other than self interest.
If you don't want to rely on adverts then create a pay to view subscription feature, you'll instantly find out how many people actually give 3shits about your stream or not and then can see if its a profitable model.
This is something I have often thought about doing, but there are a few problems with it. Mainly, for various reasons not everyone is able to pay for content, they may not have the money or the ability (no paypal account, etc). For me, I do not want to exclude people who love eSports as much as I do from being able to view content.
I really like instream advertising and not the standard add-vertising. When you do your job well, the adverts are even fun and the advertiser for also benefits (and yourself too). Lets say you test some gear every week in between matches or even more creative forms of advertising/interactive stuff etcetc. Streamers have alot to offer, like, a normal add is 20 seconds with most people not really paying attention, but streamers can actually engage more interactively too future consumers, so this engagement should be worth something somehow. My best bet would be to take advertising on your channels to new heights where you can offer more to the viewers and the advertisers so people dont need addblock anymore on your channel. You simply bypass the current adsmedium and bring both parties closer together creating a little more money in your wallet at the same time (it can still be twitch ofcourse).
Govie, in-stream ads have some inherent problems. For one, the advertisers themselves don't have analytics of the number of ads played to viewers. If it is built in-stream, your advertisers don't know how many people viewed your ads, so they won't know how much of their money goes to views.
This number is very important to them, especially when they want to justify purchasing more ad time.
As well, in-stream requires a sponsor that is international, because the target audience is international. The benefit of third party ads is that they are sold to internationally, so a Canadian stream can still get revenue from ads viewed in the Philippines .
Also, you need to find these advertisers yourself, where as third-party provided ads will have these readily available.
I agree that in-stream ads work much better in some cases, you can't assume it is ok in all cases.
You are absolutely correct about intrusive ads, and I agree to your reasons to use Adblock. However, these problems Twitch has with running ads is not the fault of the content producer.
For one thing, the technology to deliver ads that are seamless (no sound problems, no crashes etc) is not perfect, but maybe in the future these things will be perfected.
At the moment, Twitch has a partnership with CBS Interactive to provide advertisements. So the development and technology to deliver the ads is not even within Twitch's control, that is from CBSi. So essentially you are punishing the content producer from something that is totallly out of their control.
That is like yelling at the cook in a restaurant because the waitress served the food late and spilled your drink.
As well, internet advertising has not been that intrusive in a long time. I rarely see pop-up ads, and those I do encounter aren't done nearly as intrusive (e.g. easy to stop, does not recur, has no sound/animation).
On June 21 2014 11:04 Jett.Jack.Alvir wrote: JonIrenicus,
You are absolutely correct about intrusive ads, and I agree to your reasons to use Adblock. However, these problems Twitch has with running ads is not the fault of the content producer.
For one thing, the technology to deliver ads that are seamless (no sound problems, no crashes etc) is not perfect, but maybe in the future these things will be perfected.
At the moment, Twitch has a partnership with CBS Interactive to provide advertisements. So the development and technology to deliver the ads is not even within Twitch's control, that is from CBSi. So essentially you are punishing the content producer from something that is totallly out of their control.
That is like yelling at the cook in a restaurant because the waitress served the food late and spilled your drink.
As well, internet advertising has not been that intrusive in a long time. I rarely see pop-up ads, and those I do encounter aren't done nearly as intrusive (e.g. easy to stop, does not recur, has no sound/animation).
The technology to put ad-streaming under the control of twitch is already available. In particular, a company called Unicorn Media provides Cloud based ad insertion technology that makes AdBlock useless. Unicorn Media was acquired by Brightcove, a leading ad-serving company. https://www.brightcove.com/en/company/press/brightcove-signs-definitive-agreement-acquire-unicorn-media It will probably just be a matter of time until twitch adapts these services.
On June 20 2014 21:01 Dingodile wrote: Sounds like you think I use adblock? Wrong. I have complained that TakeTV doesnt send ads during breaks.
You should think about other side. If you see HuK, you see EG & Monster Energy Logo etc. If Twitch makes Adblock useless and suddenly Huk or Demuslim only have 100 viewers, I dont think it is a great thing for Twitch and EG, Monster etc.
It's a good point you made. I want to add a great exemple. AzubuTV. IMMvp is one of the most knowed player on earth. You know how much viewer he pulled out yesterday ? less then 200 for at least 5h of stream. He was featured on TL. Forgg had 1200 for a rebroadcast. You know the reason ? You can't watch AzubuTV with adblock on, at least embedded on TLnet. People prefer missing one of the most accomplished player of all time and watch a rebroadcast than just turning off adblock. Is it unfair ? Not at all : People always go to what suit them the most, and if they can avoid ads, they will ofc.
MLG is losing at least 50% of its potential viewership by forcing adblock remove. I don't watch it for that reason (and the fact that it starts wayyy to late for me). The ads the put on your face is 10x louder than the rest. Why not showing in stream ad like HSC, DH ? They would win much more money this way. But hey, it's MLG and they are stupid, it's a fact.
I personally just unadblock streamers that I really enjoy watching/want to support them. If they're really doing a good job entertaining me then I don't have a problem watching their ads, it's that simple. If people like you enough they'll unadblock you.
EPT
