Twitch has provided a look ahead at its key updates for 2023, including offering more options for streamers to earn money and updating its ads incentive programme.
In an open letter from chief product officer Tom Verrilli and chief monetisation officer Mike Minton, the pair detail new products set to launch in the first half of the year.
“Our main focus for the year is your growth – both for your communities and for your earnings on Twitch,” they said.
Some of the biggest changes will come to the ads incentive programme. Streamers have criticised the existing system for its complexity and the lack of control they have over ads shown on their stream.
This year, the programme will be updated to provide streamers with greater flexibility to adjust the number of ads, as well as more visibility and control on when they run.
Other changes will be made to pre-roll ads. For instance, running three minutes of ads per hour in any way will disable all pre-rolls. Picture-by-picture ads will also be applied to the majority of pre-rolls. Further, it will be made easier for streamers to flag incoming ads to their viewers.
Twitch will also explore new ways for streamers to make money. It’s set to launch Sound Bites, a first-party sound alerts tool where viewers can pay to interact with streamers. Sponsorship features will also be tested, such as providing channel skins and clickable branded graphics.
Analytics is another area of improvement. Affiliates and Partners will have access to Creator Home with personalised tips and recommendations, plus streamers will have access to tag impression analytics, data on the best days and times to stream, and audience retention data.
A number of other smaller updates will be explored this year.
They include: improving the Guest Star feature to better integrate multiple streams; first party tools to celebrate viewers; a messaging product to target followers when offline; and expanding customisable tags with persistent, browsable collections.
“We love seeing what you can do when you’re enabled and empowered. We’re launching these features and tools because we want you to be able to build the communities you want to build, more easily and more reliably,” reads the blog post.
It’s clear Twitch has released this blog post to help promote transparency with its community, something it’s been criticised for lacking in the past – particularly with safety updates.
“Together, we can make Twitch better for all of us, so it’s important that we show up, tell you about what we’re working on, and get your input. We’ll also share updates more consistently to get you excited about what we’re building,” reads the blog post.
Full details can be found on the Twitch Blog.
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