Twitch Viewers Will Be Able to "Snooze" Ads in 2023

01/26/2023 10:14 am EST

Twitch is making a change in 2023 that'll hopefully make the streaming platform's ad system a bit more agreeable for viewers. The company announced this week plans to make it so that viewers can "snooze" the ads that roll during someone's stream which effectively means you don't have to watch an ad at a time you don't want to. That ad will presumably still come up later based on the language used in the announcement, so you'll watch it eventually, but it's at least a step in a better direction.

All this info comes from an open letter penned by chief product officer Tom Verrilli and chief monetization officer Mike Minton with the bit about snoozing ads found under a section detailing how Twitch plans to improve the ad experience. Ads are a staple part of Twitch that viewers can largely just ignore by tuning out for a few seconds, but they'll play regardless, and if they play at the wrong time, they can interrupt key moments in a stream. Twitch's planned changes will look to curb that frustration by giving viewers an option to push back the ad to a time where it won't derail whatever's going on.

"We're also exploring ways to give communities a heads up when ads are coming and the ability to snooze video mid-roll ads," the Twitch letter said.

The letter didn't specify what this process would look like, so it's unclear how far an ad gets pushed back, how many times it can be snoozed, and so on. It's likely that you won't be able to delay it for too long since it'll need to play eventually, though it's expected we'll get more details on this through a blog post like this one or a Patch Notes stream in the future.

Of course, people could always just opt for the Twitch Turbo service which provides an ad-free experience, but some may not find the subscription worth their investment in its current form. Twitch is aware of that, too, and has plans to make it "more relevant" this year.

"We know some viewers find value in an ad-free experience, so we're working on making Twitch Turbo — which offers perks like ad-free viewing and chat upgrades to emotes and badges — better and more relevant for our community," Twitch said. "We're excited to share more updates later this year."

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