Twitch Losing the Platform War Against YouTube, Asmongold Says
Asmongold, a popular streamer on Twitch, believes that Twitch is losing the platform war against YouTube due to its “cannibalistic” ads that disrupt every streamer’s videos.
Twitch introduced ads that appear in the middle of streams instead of at the start, which caused Asmongold to voice his concerns about the platform in September 2020. Twitch has now introduced the Ad Incentive Program in June, giving streams more reasons to run ads frequently.
Asmongold believes that this move is only going to harm Twitch as a streaming giant. He expressed shock when a viewer complained about having 35 ads in the last 25 minutes, stating that Twitch is dying because of the excessive ads. While he understands that Twitch needs to make money through ads, he wishes they were less intrusive to the viewer experience.
One of the significant differences between Twitch and YouTube approached to ads, according to Asmongold, is that Twitch ads interfere with the content, while YouTube ads do not. He believes this is one of the reasons why YouTube is becoming more popular.
Asmongold compared the experience of watching ads on Twitch and YouTube, stating that Twitch ads actively prevent viewers from watching the content, unlike YouTube ads where the viewer can skip them after a short period of time. He sees this as a big problem for Twitch.
Asmongold also suggests that Twitch could benefit from promoting Twitch Turbo more. Twitch Turbo is a subscription service that allows viewers to watch streams without pre-roll or mid-roll ads for $8.99 per month. However, he acknowledges that YouTube Premium offers similar benefits for $11.99 per month, including background play and access to YouTube music.
In Asmongold’s opinion, YouTube poses the biggest threat to Twitch’s streaming monopoly. Despite surviving challenges from Mixer and Facebook, YouTube is proving to be a formidable competitor.
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Twitch has enjoyed a streaming monopoly for the past decade, but YouTube is emerging as its biggest rival.