Twitch expands ad programs to pay streamers more money

theverge.com:

Twitch is expanding its ad incentive program to include more creators and pay them more money. Earlier this year, Twitch began offering select streamers a flat, guaranteed payment in exchange for running a fixed amount of ads during a fixed number of hours. Now, Twitch is opening up the program to include more partners and is changing the way it structures payouts to pay creators more.

Originally, payouts earned with the ad incentive program were calculated using a CPM model. Basically, streamers would get a flat rate for every 1,000 ads watched on their channel.

“We found that a fixed CPM model wasn’t the most straightforward way to share revenue with creators,” said Mike Minton, vice president of monetization at Twitch, in an email toThe Verge. “So we’re now launching a new model that’s not only easier to understand but also increases ad payouts by paying creators 55 percent of the revenue for each ad that runs on their stream.”

Though affiliates are not yet included in this new program, which rolls out June 15th, they will qualify for the 55 percent of ad revenue starting in August so long as they run three minutes of ads per hour. Twitch will also disable the highly annoying pre-roll ads for users who run ads for that same amount of time.

“Our ad products are built for Twitch’s live and interactive environment, and we’re continually working to add less intrusive ads experiences for both viewers and creators,” Minton said.

According to Twitch, the 55 / 45 split of ad revenue will “ensure [Twitch] can pass price increases through to creators.”

Back in April, a Bloomberg report stated that Twitch was investigating ways to increase earnings by potentially decreasing revenue share with its top streamers. The report