Twitch Prime No Longer Blocks Ads

If you pay for Twitch Prime to get rid of the ads, I have some bad news.

Amazon sent potentially millions of emails to Twitch Prime customers Monday Morning, August 20th, Announcing they will be getting rid of Twitch Prime's ability to block ads on their live streaming service, Twitch.tv.

In an email announcement entitled "Changes to twitch prime", stating that "Universal ad-free viewing will no longer be available for Twitch Prime new members, starting September 14th."

It went on to state that existing Twitch Prime members with monthly subscriptions will continue to receive ad-free viewing until October 15th. Luckily for those who have already renewed annually, they will continue to receive the ad-free features until their next renewal date.

Before the Announcement, People subscribed to the Twitch Prime service --A premium subscription with a bunch of benefits for Twitch users-- and those Amazon Prime members who opted into Twitch Prime (for no extra charge) were able to enjoy ad-free viewing of any and all live streams on the Twitch website. 

Under normal circumstances, (I.E, not having either Amazon or Twitch subscriptions,) Twitch live streaming personalities would be able to earn ad revenue from the amount of eyes viewing the ads that played before new viewers could see the stream as it was happening. Most of these ads were 30 seconds long, so most of the time, new viewers of a stream would have no idea what would be happening until the ad was over. Nearly every time this happens, new viewers won't even know if the streamer said hello, or gave some sort of shout-out to the new viewer.

This creates an obvious conundrum. Advertisers pay both Amazon and streamers for the views their ads get, so a subscription to Twitch Prime bundled for free with Amazon Prime would narrow the amount of eyes viewing the ads significantly.

So what is Amazon to do in this situation? Show less ads to appease subscribers? Or show more ads to appease Advertisers and Streamers? Considering that the old model kind of defeated the purpose of advertising, Amazon chose to get rid of Ad blocking in favor of more money.

The social media backlash

Social media, however, isn't taking this very well. Reddit, Facebook and Google+ are ablaze with angry Twitch Prime subscribers who feel they were ripped off by this revelation. The hashtag #TwitchPrime has been trending at -or around- the top 4 tags all morning.

Twitch Prime is placing ads back in? Wasn't that most of the point?

— Plague Of Gripes (@PlagueOfGripes) August 20, 2018

Excuse me, but you say you are removing ad-free from Twitch Prime to "be able to give the creators the ad money" but at launch you said "you won't see ads, but don't worry, THE BROADCASTER WILL STILL GET MONEY LIKE YOU WATCHED THE AD" So which one is the lie?

— Dedlok (@Dedlok) August 20, 2018

Others took a more humerous approach to the growing backlash...

*during sex*

Me: I want you to hurt me

Her: Universal ad-free viewing will no longer be a part of Twitch Prime starting Sept 14

Me: What

Her: This change will strengthen and expand that advertising opportunity for creators so they can get more support from-

Me: Wait no stop

— BuffaloPrime (@BuffaloPrime) August 20, 2018

In the midst of all the backlash, Bloomberg writer Lucas Shaw uploaded an article on August 15th, entitled "Amazon has YouTube envy", in which evidence suggests that this move - as well as recent efforts to pay influential Twitch streamers ridiculous amounts of money in exclusive marketing contracts- is an attempt to compete with Google's advertising giant, YouTube.

At a recent staff meeting, Twitch Chief Executive Officer Emmett Shear set a target of $1 billion in ad sales for Twitch, according to three people present. That’s more than double its current sales. Twitch’s key advantage, besides being live, is its popularity among young men who tend to be resistant to ads. The average Twitch user has stopped paying for cable TV and employs technology to block advertising across the internet. But hundreds of thousands of these hard-to-reach viewers tune in daily to watch top video game streamers, such as Ninja, Twitch’s biggest star.

This circumstance seems to suggest that Amazon's move to remove ad-blocking from Twitch was part of a much larger plan to compete with the largest Ad-supported video sharing site in the world.

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