Twitch has announced the ad incentive program which will reward streamers for running advertisements with lucrative payouts.
Twitch has announced new options, called the Ad Incentive Program, for both affiliate streamers and partners. These options come in the form of objectives for streamers, with very easy-to-hit milestones, to encourage them to stream more. And, hopefully, run some more ads, despite the very anti-ad culture among Twitch viewers.
How does Twitch's new Ad Incentive Program, or AIP, work?
Here's how it works:
- At the beginning of the month, you are presented with a few incentives for an agreed upon ad timing, such as stream 40 hours while running ads for 2 minutes each hour. This functions similar to the bounty board.
- The amount offered varied by creator, and scales upwards the more ads you play.
- Stream and meet the requirements
- The incentive bonus is added on to the next month's revenue automatically with no additional steps to the streamer.
"At launch, this program presents personalized offers to select creators," Twitch said in their announcement. "Currently, the offers boil down to: stream for a specific number of hours — while running ads — in exchange for a flat payout. The goal is simple: help you earn a more predictable monthly income through ads, with no ceiling on earning potential. Plus, we made it even easier by building it on top of Ads Manager. Once you set your ad schedule via Ads Manager, you’re done thinking about ads and you can focus on making awesome content with your community."
Why has Twitch started this new AIP program?
While Twitch presents this is a boon to creators, which it is monetarily, they also are certainly doing so for the benefit of their bottom line. After all, without ads, no one is making money, including Twitch.
We've created the Ads Incentive Program, or AIP — pronounced ‘ape’ — for two crucial reasons: reliable and predictable income is important for streamers, and managing ads can be a pain that takes time away from creating content. No more guesswork when it comes to your monthly ad payouts. No more fiddling with ad timing. We want to free creators from additional management responsibilities so you can focus on doing what you love with the community you love. Having a reliable floor of ad revenue should enable you to better plan for the future, whatever that may look like. We hope it’s an important step towards empowering creators.
How to see if you qualify for the Twitch Ad Incentive Program
If you are a Twitch streamer and want to check if you have access to it, you can do so in the Ads Manager section. If you're logged in, that link will automatically point you to your own. There's no word yet on when this will roll out for all creators, so be sure to check in on this page often if you don't have it yet.
Will this be enough for streamers to endure their chat's hatred of ads?
Let's face it. Twitch viewers (and most of the internet) hate advertisements. But they keep the lights on for all of these creators that we all love to watch. It will be interesting to see if offering an extra $1000 to a content creator will be enough to offset losses in viewership. This could eventually cause a paradigm shift where viewers end up realizing that these ads help keep their creators going. At least, that's the hope.
On YouTube, that culture has been normalized, especially when creators are getting direct sponsorships and running native ads. Time will tell if this will be the case fo Twitch, too.
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