Twitch Ads (and other Revenue)

Twitch Billboard

Recently Twitch.TV (also now known as Prime Gaming) has been making changes to how ads run on their service. They have found a way (and then another way and so forth) to stop ad blockers from letting people avoid their ads. Now, this has been on ongoing battle between adblocks and Twitch but it seems the tides are turning in favor of the streaming giant and the users are left unable to circumvent the series of sponsored videos. This has led to a slew of rage-filled posts on the Twitch subreddit and elsewhere as people feel bombarded with unwanted ads. While I’m no fan of ads interrupting my viewing experience, I seem to have the unpopular opinion that Twitch attempting to ensure their ads get seen is… okay.

In this post, I’m going to discuss the if Twitch forcing ads is okay (and what would be okay if not what they are doing), their other means of revenue, and what the options mean to the end user.

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Streaming

Cover picFor those who aren’t in the loop, there are a number of WoW players (and other games, for that matter) who stream their play online. Similar to making an epic PVP video or content guide, except it’s live, unscripted and could end up awesome or making you look like a total noob. I’ve decided that I may as well join the fray and see if any people are bored enough to check out my streams and posted videos on TwitchTV.

You can find my live stream at http://www.twitch.tv/sharden0 if I’m on and past streams at http://www.twitch.tv/alternateimage/profile/pastBroadcasts. So far I’m still working on getting everything together, so if the audio or video quality isn’t quite up to par yet – don’t give up hope, you may still get to see my badness (or awesomeness) soon enough. I’ll be streaming WoW PVP, maybe raids and random shenanigans. Also, Battlefield 4, League of Legends, and probably some other things.

Oh and speaking of streams, a good friend of mine also has a new channel. Check out for http://www.twitch.tv/vinid87 for similar streams and videos.

*twitch links updated*