STREAM REPORT NEWSLETTER
Stream Smarter, Not Harder: Twitch’s New Viewer Analytics Tool
Twitch has introduced a valuable new tool to its Dashboard that helps streamers identify the best times to broadcast their content.
#106
September 13, 2023
Welcome to Stream Report, a newsletter from Gaming Careers covering important news and updates in streaming and content creation.
Optimize Your Streaming Schedule with Twitch's Latest Tool
Twitch has introduced a valuable new tool to its Dashboard that helps streamers identify the best times to broadcast their content. The tool, which analyzes viewer numbers for each specific streaming category over time, allows streamers to research when their broadcasts for certain games are most likely to attract the highest number of viewers.
Here’s how it works:
- Streamers choose a category/game and a stream language.
- The tool calculates the average number of viewers for the chosen category/language.
- Charts show the viewer-to-channel ratio for each day of the week.
Streamers can configure the charts to use data from the past 7 or 28 days. Changing to the 7-day option may allow creators to pick up on trending games before their data is shown in the 28-day view.
In addition to this, Twitch has also implemented a special filter that allows streamers to exclude popular channels from their data analysis. This feature is designed to exclude channels that rank in the top 2% in the category by peak online viewers. This is beneficial as it enables streamers to disregard data that may be skewed due to significant events or esports tournaments.
While tools similar to Time to Stream have been available externally for a while, it’s encouraging to see Twitch leveraging its own data to assist creators in optimizing their streaming schedules.
The Rise of Creator-Made Sporting Events
The rise of creator-led livestreaming was underscored on September 9, with two major sporting events: The Sidemen Charity Match and GP Explorer 2. These events, helmed by influential content creators, successfully raised substantial funds for charity while captivating millions of viewers worldwide.
Held at West Ham’s London Stadium, the annual Sidemen Charity Match sold out to over 60,000 in-person spectators and peaked at 2.7 million online viewers. The event, graced by the presence of influential personalities such as MrBeast, xQc, and Kai Cenat, successfully raised over $3 million for charity and accumulated a staggering 6.9 million hours watched. Despite being broadcast across 78 different channels, the majority of viewers chose to engage through the official Sidemen YouTube channel. The match concluded with an 8-5 victory for the Sidemen team, further adding to the event’s success.
On the same day, French streamer Squeezie hosted GP Explorer 2, a Formula 4 race event. With 24 amateur pilots, including popular French streamers and rappers, the event attracted 1.3 million concurrent viewers and set a record for peak viewers among all French-language broadcasts. The event also featured professional Formula 1 drivers Esteban Ocon and Pierre Gasly and saw YouTuber Depielo emerge as the winner.
Sporting events have become a popular choice for creators due to their ability to engage a large audience, raise substantial funds for charity, and provide a platform for influencers to showcase their personalities beyond their usual content.
YouTube Simplifies Ad Controls for Creators
YouTube has recently announced changes to its ad controls in YouTube Studio, which are set to simplify the monetization process and potentially increase creators’ earnings. These changes, taking effect in November, are aimed at optimizing ad placement and viewer experience, while also removing the confusion over ad format selection.
Ad Changes for Videos
For newly uploaded videos, YouTube is doing away with individual ad controls for pre-roll, post-roll, skippable, and non-skippable ads. Instead, creators will have a simplified choice: to have ads appear on a video – either On or Off. However, all existing videos will retain their current ad format selections, and any future edits to a video’s monetization settings will only offer this simplified choice.
Most creators should not notice a significant change, as YouTube shared that over 90% of monetized long-form videos had these ad formats enabled at the time of publishing.
Ad Changes for Livestreams
For creators who livestream, YouTube is introducing new options to increase potential earnings. These include options for YouTube-optimized mid-roll frequency, self-selected mid-roll frequency, and new live display ads.
To help creators adjust to these changes, YouTube is implementing a 60-second countdown before a mid-roll ad appears in the Live Control Room, and creators will have the option to skip the ad before the countdown concludes.
Impact on Creator Revenue
YouTube’s aim is to help creators earn more. In a 2023 experiment, creators who enabled non-skippable ads along with multiple combinations of all other ad formats saw over 5% greater YouTube ad revenue. Similarly, creators who enabled pre-roll ads saw over 15% greater YouTube ad revenue.
Additional Features
YouTube is also rolling out new revenue information in YouTube Analytics to showcase ad revenue creators earn from live streams, as well as ad revenue earned from live replays. Plus, creators will have a third option to optimize mid-roll earnings on long-form videos by combining automated ad breaks recommended by YouTube and manual ad breaks set by the creator.
⚡ News Highlights
- Twitch streamers can now view their Turbo earnings in their analytics.
- Twitch is ending Twitch Studio support on Mac due to insufficient usage.
- Many Twitch streamers faced account breaches over the weekend due to flaws in Pando, Tamagucci, and Stream Alerts TV extensions.
- Twitch is trialing a Headliner display ad on the mobile following page, but isn’t sharing revenue with creators.
- Mizkif accidentally leaked his weekly Twitch earnings, while Aceu disclosed a profitable Twitch Bounty for ‘ordering a pizza’.
- YouTube has started displaying clip analytics such as views, creator, and source video.
- MrBeast’s A/B tests revealed that thumbnails with his mouth closed outperformed those with his mouth open.
- US TikTok users can now make direct purchases within the app as TikTok Shop launches.
Newsletter edition:
#106
Written by:
The founder of Gaming Careers with a borderline unhealthy obsession for cameras, microphones, and all things streaming. He gets mistaken for Stephen Merchant at least 5 times a day.
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