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Comment by Judgmentality | Hacker News Reader

Microsoft tried and failed, plus Facebook and Google never really got anywhere. The irony is most people on twitch are surprisingly unhappy with it and want a better alternative. The other thing to know is that twitch is still a significant money loser for Amazon.

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Which is weird, because out of all of the platforms, Twitch keeps the biggest cut of ad revenue. They rate all ads at a fixed cost regardless the size of the streamer (which is bonkers). Twitch should have systems in place by now to make the most off an ad run on the biggest streamers, but they're doing a really poor job of it. Amazon does seem to be exerting some influence here to rectify this though (see recent metrics changes to Twitch APIs).

This actually leads me to believe that Twitch users are probably at like a 95%+ AdBlock install rate.

Like YouTube, Twitch is pretty good at bypassing adblockers.

I can't remember the last time I've seen an ad on either.

And also the main point was that Twitch does a terrible job at monetizing off their ads. They have the worst advertising platform.

Ads on Twitch run for all streamers. There's very little targeting capability and they strike individual deals for all ads on their system rather than purchase from a DSP.

Twitch takes a 30-50% cut of revenue from subs, which is an incredible money printing machine. Ads aren't there to make money for twitch. They're there to annoy users into subscribing.

As much as you're right here, you missed the point.

They're still struggling to make a profit.

Turns out their business probably needs both to work.

I don't think this is true at all. I think Amazon has realized they can't make twitch profitable just from subs, and are heavily pushing ads in order to try to fundamentally change how they make money with it. I also think Amazon, the entire company, is making a big push towards ads. Amazon is still terrible with ads, but I think this is one of the overarching themes of how the company is shifting focus in the near future.

https://www.ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2021/3/14/do-amazon-...

What you're saying is demonstrably true from recent attempts by Amazon to overhaul Twitch's ads platform.

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