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Comment by cooper_ganglia | Hacker News Reader

I hate how Twitch puts over a minute of pre-roll ads before you can start watching a stream. They should at least wait 60 seconds, I can't imagine how many people have chosen not to catch a new stream because they'd immediately have to sit through over a minute of ads before even getting to any content.

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This gets doubly bad when I go to watch a streamer I haven't seen in a while, I start getting ads, then I have to log in. Put in my creds, get my phone, find the MFA app, find the Twitch in the list, see the code expires in a few seconds, wait while it flashes red at me, see the new code, enter the new code, get logged in - and the ad restarts since I'm logged in now and page refreshes.

As comes up whenever the "waiting for a new code" issue is discussed, you can enter that "old" code for usually up to 30 seconds. You don't need to wait.

I always forget which services this works for and which ones it doesn't :)

This feature of TOTP auth is universal afaik.

Nope. They need to implement it server-side.

There is some pretty surprising service that doesn't support this, the moment it disappears from your phone the code is no longer valid. It might be Microsoft if you're not using MS's auth app? Like I said I forget which one it is so I always just wait if I'm <5 seconds from expiry, but it is big enough that I was very surprised when it happened.

If you set it up this way. An admin can choose not to or could allow e. g. 8 previous codes. That would allow four and a half minutes to put in any code of this timespan.

might as well try it while you're waiting, yeah? if you get in, you're done. if not, you were just going to wait anyways.

This definitely kills the low-intent watcher. Twitch sends me daily emails to hop on and watch streamers that I follow. Every once in awhile, I'm not busy so I click the link, "Sure I'll watch that person write OCaml...". And 30 seconds in, I'm almost ALWAYS, "nah... I'm not into sitting here this long, I didn't even intend to be here".

If they could let someone watch like 3 to 5 minutes, they could likely increase engagement.

You'd think or hope they'd be tracking, A/B testing to see how this goes - and I wonder if incentives are perfectly aligned between Twitch's profits-costs and of the streamers they have to share ad revenues with?

The tracking is presumably extensive, but I would guess that the metrics are wrong. I would assume that Twich is optimizing for ad revenue, not engagement, entertainment, or utility.

It's a pretty classic case of a startup sacrificing profit for growth until they reach critical mass and move to maximizing profit. Twitch probably decided they were as big as they were going to get and are no longer focused on user growth.

It might also give worse insights on how you interpret the data. I'd imagine that those with huge followers/events will have most people grit through the ads. I myself do this when watching esports tournaments. I don't mind the pre-roll because I'll be there for 30+ minutes.

But as you and the other poster mentioned, that wouldn't necessarily be true for smaller streamers. In fact I share the sentiments posted elsewhere; where if you want to check out a smaller channel but don't want to waste 1.5 mins in ads. I'll just immediately bounce.

It's a doom cycle were those with popularity will always out compete smaller streamers. Smaller streamers get cannibalized by site's practices.

The only thing missing is a competitor but as we see from past competitor's streamers/viewers seem to be a very fickle bunch. They like the platform not the streamers, but the platform is now hostile.

If you do A/B testing you should be trying to control as many variables as possible.

It makes sense for twitch, given its skewed distribution, to compare the behaviour of users engaging with the different types of streamers.

Under this logic, I presume they might actually see that engagement is not substantially harmed for big time streamers while getting actually millions of views on their ads as opposed to engagement harmed for low viewership streamers who don't really give the platform much money anyway.

I think it's a flaw in your thinking to assume twitch might have the interests of small streamers in mind. They probably don't. Once a big streamer retires, another takes their place. The viewership remains.

> I can't imagine how many people have chosen not to catch a new stream because they'd immediately have to sit through over a minute of ads before even getting to any content.

I've actually stopped trying to look for new streamers to watch because of it.

I've resorted to watching Twitch on YouTube (just watch yesterday's streams after they've been uploaded).

I regularly do this. If I go to watch a stream and I get an unskippable ad, I just leave the site entirely. Would rather watch other content.

This is up to the streamer.

Either ~3 minutes of ads per hour, or an up-front 30s of ads before you can view the stream.

You would only see >1 minute of ads if they choose the first option and you hit the stream on the ad break.

But I agree with you. I've bounced from many-a-stream due to up-front ads.

I exclusively check out new twitch channels upon getting recommendations or learning from the channel via something like YT, purely due to the ads.

Streamers (like myself) can entirely not opt into affiliate and have zero ads for their viewers.

I heard from another big streamer that you doesn't get as advertised if you decide to do that sadly

I think this is configurable on the streamer's end. I watch a lot of PirateSoftware and he's talked about how choosing to run ads at certain intervals vs running them before the stream starts affected his viewership levels. I don't immediately have a video of him saying that, but I imagine there's a YouTube short where he describes that.

All things considered though, I think you are right that the option that forces it at the beginning of the stream is obnoxious and affects the interest of those intending to stream. There's likely a better way (similar to your suggestion) that gets people involved in the stream first.

I think that might depend somewhat on what the stream is. For instance I watch quite a bit of Zelda Ocarina of Time Randomizer race restreams on Twitch. For those it is much much better to have some up-front ads when I join the stream, which is almost always during the "stream starts in 15 minutes" countdown, rather than to have ads appear mid-race. I don't know how much control the streamer has over this kind of thing, though.

> I don't know how much control the streamer has over this kind of thing, though.

Quite a bit. As long as the streamer is running 3 minutes of ads per hour there will not be prerolls. Ad breaks can be run manually or on a configurable schedule, and scheduled ad breaks can be snoozed for 5 minutes (up to 3 times I think) if they arrive at a bad time.

You can't stack preroll free-time for more than an hour though, so you don't get 5 hours without prerolls by running 15 minutes of ads at once.

Mmm. I think for the channels I watch for these races they pick the "preroll" option and are right to do so, because 3 mins of ads an hour would be pretty obnoxious in a 2.5h race. (For the random-settings races which can go 4 or 6 hours if the randomizer picks silly settings, there are scheduled breaks every 2 hours, which provides a point to run ads. But normal races run right through without breaks.)

I watch mostly through the Android cast-to-Chromecast client though, which might be a bit of a special case -- until very recently it didn't show ads at all, which was presumably a silly oversight on Twitch's part...

The worst about preroll is they often fail and run 2-3 times in a row before registering you saw them. Can confirm I just stopped searching new streamers due to that. Even the one that aren't supposed to have preroll because they run ads still tend have some somehow, I guess twitch force them anyway or it's just bugged.

Along with the pre-roll ad system that also causes me to nope out of a stream, their ad system just seems fairly buggy in general. I will constantly be hit with a long ad break into a stream, just for the stream to come back and another ad break rolls again. It's frustrating and I find myself on Twitch less and less. Definitely less inclined to pay for Turbo.

I don't typically mind the ads for streamers who run them between games or set aside an ad break. However if a streamer doesn't manually run the ads live streams never really have a good spot for them to automatically run. Such a double edged sword.

I've completely abandoned Twitch in part for this reason. I imagine they've lost a lot of viewers due to this but it seems like it's still far more profitable for them. A shame really.

As a viewer I disagree, I would much rather sit and wait 60 seconds in the beginning than to start watching something just for my stream to randomly be stopped for an ad.

Since it's live, it isn't like the video will just pick back up where you were. I realize ads could still play during, but if we could make it only in the beginning (or the streamer could say, I am taking a break and trigger an ad, that would be better.

streamers, at least ones who are affiliate, do that. They often time their own breaks with ad breaks so that viewers don't miss content.

if you have someone you WANT to watch, 60s isn't a big deal at the beginning. If you're a new viewer and the first thing you see when you visit a stream is 60s for ads, when you don't even know if you'd like the streamer, your bounce rate is going to be very high. It really limits discoverability.

Also they don’t have a player that can move between live and VOD like YouTube’s. If it were easier to jump back to before the ad and play at 1.25 until you catch up it’d probably be less annoying to the users.

This is a big reason that I will watch a stream on Youtube if a streamer simulcasts on both. The Youtube player is just such a better experience than Twitch's and I already pay for Youtube premium so I can also avoid ads.

research shows most, they do it to manipulate streamers into constantly running ads for everyone.

Yeah I agree. I think twitch does too since as a streamer you have the ability disable pre roll ads for your stream by running an ad (it will disable pre roll for a set amount of time).

It seems like they’re using it to incentivize streamers to run more ads so they’ll get better retention by turning off pre roll.

I am not sure how people are not making the connection but this is directly tied to the economy and interest rates. Unprofitable platforms or barely profitable had relied on advertising before interest rates go up. Advertisers are increasing their costs and platforms can only insert more ads anywhere they can. Roku anyone?

The key point is platforms are fully aware of what they are doing and understand that this will drive users away but that is the point. If you can't fire enough people, sell enough ads or reduce enough product maintenance in your business then the next step is to fire your end users.

"Doing this will drive away viewers, decreasing what we can charge for ads, so lets do it" is not something anyone in any board room of a company selling ads has ever said. "Firing your end users" has the tricky side effects of destroying your revenue.

Like super profitable businesses stopped squeezing for more money? Every shit business person will try to get a promotion and buy a new expensive car and yacht and the only way to do that is make even more profit, so most of the time the quality of the product or service goes down.

There might be a correlation with the economy, where they need to triple down on the enshitification but it could be cultural, "the other managers did this shit and they bought soem cool sports car, I am better then them I will buy 2 cars"

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