Recently, discussions have ignited surrounding Twitch and a potential “adpocalypse”. Various prominent Twitch creators reported significant declines in ad revenue earlier this month, sparking fears of an incoming exodus of advertisers for Twitch. However, recent reports are showing this adpocalypse is a temporary issue, caused by Twitch’s Content Classification Label system.
Last month, Twitch faced various controversies, largely surrounding the Israel-Palestine conflict. Firstly, it came to light that Twitch had prevented users in Israel and Palestine from signing up to the website for an entire year, following the terrorist attack on October 7, 2023. According to Twitch, they were attempting to avoid graphic content making its way onto the site. Sign-ups from these regions could still create accounts using phone verification, but Twitch’s oversight to derestrict the regions left these measures in place until recently.
An entire year later, people realised Twitch restricted these users, causing dire criticism from both streamers and industry leaders. This was reported by many as "Twitch bans users from Israel" and was a factor in the rising fears of antisemitism on the platform. While Twitch took action in 2023, it was not reported on or noticed until Oct 2024.
Shortly after the restrictions were revealed, Twitch faced its second controversy in the form of Democratic Representative Ritchie Torres. Representative Torres made claims of rising antisemitism on Twitch, specifically in regard to popular political streamer HasanAbi. Torres claimed Twitch enables Hasan’s alleged antisemitic behaviour, and likened the livestreaming platform to Nazi Germany. Whether or not his claims are true, alarms of antisemitism have reportedly frightened advertisers. Journalist Richard Lewis reported that key advertisers for Twitch had paused spending over these allegations.
These recent controversies caused Twitch to take action: they banned the word “Zionist” when used in a derogatory manner, and added a "Politics and Sensitive Social Issues" category to their Content Classification Labels. These labels were created so Twitch advertisers can choose what sort of content their product is represented beside, but usually streamers themselves have to manually mark their content. Some streamers who had not marked themselves under the Politics and Sensitive Social Issues category were affected due to things like stream tags. In the early stages of this new category, it seems that Twitch has minimal advertisers ready for this content.
Earlier in November, streamer TheStockGuy showed how his revenue had dropped by 95% in only one month. This was one of the first few reports from streamers that stoked fears of an incoming adpocalypse. Many other sizeable Twitch creators shared similar stories, leading to further speculation. But, only a few days after reporting these drops, TheStockGuy revealed once he removed the “Election” tag from his stream, revenues returned to normal.
Interesting!
— Zach Bussey (@zachbussey) November 18, 2024
Once @TheStockGuyTV removed the 'Election' tag from his stream, his ad revenue returned for the subsequent stream. He says, "There is no adpocalypse."
To me, it does suggest Twitch opted to remove ads from anything politically related. pic.twitter.com/erlwOt2NsE
While tags on Twitch were previously used for finding similar content, the platform seems to be utilising these tags to categorise content. Twitch streamers who rely on ad revenue should avoid using controversial tags, or ones which may be a brand risk.
In other cases where streamers have not used controversial tags, there is a possibility that they were just too quick to panic. Twitch doesn’t calculate ad revenue immediately, and will only appear to streamers a couple of days after a broadcast has finished. If streamers noticed their revenue was seemingly down in the past days, they may have just had to wait until it was calculated.
While TheStockGuy’s ad revenue was highly restricted with the “Election” tag, it was not entirely depleted. Twitch seems to be still finding advertisers willing to associate with political content on the platform, and cannot give these streamers the same revenue more family-friendly creators enjoy. Unfortunately for Twitch, political content is highly popular on the platform, and was likely highly profitable for Twitch in the past.
On Twitch, marking political channels isn’t as simple as other sites. While Twitch does have a Politics category, most of the highly popular political commentators instead stream under the broader Just Chatting category. Just Chatting, including political commentary, is Twitch’s most popular category, nearly always ranking at the top of the platform’s charts.
2024 has been an eventful year for politics news. The US election was also highly-covered on Twitch; popular political streamers reached massive peak viewerships throughout, with HasanAbi recording 313.4K peak concurrent viewers during his election day broadcast. Unfortunately for Twitch, monetizing this political content seems to be a tough challenge.
As Twitch’s new category in the Content Classification Label system finds its feet, it will become clearer how these streamers will be affected regarding ad revenue. Hopefully, Twitch is working to find new advertisers for those under the CLL, rather than leaving so much content without proper monetisation on their platform.
