As published over on Twitch’s official blog on Thursday, October 2, it has been revealed that the game streaming service will be pushing to establish “ complete transparency ” between streamers and viewers to provide clarity on sponsored streams.
“ While we have always encouraged our broadcasters to acknowledge if they are playing games as part of a promotional campaign, we are now establishing a much more transparent approach to all paid programs on our platform and hope that it sets a precedent for the broader industry, ” wrote Matthew DiPietro, Twitch’s vice president of marketing and communications.
“ Simply put: we want complete transparency and unwavering authenticity with all content and promotions that have a sponsor relationship, ” he added.
Twitch made this decision because, sometimes, some kinds of “Influence Campaigns” (a campaign in which a popular celebrity streamer drives awareness of a particular game or product proposed by an advertiser) lack any clear distinction of whether or not they are sponsored, particularly if the relationship between the sponsor is less-than-transparent. DiPietro expressed that these sorts of campaigns have become “ a bit of a dark corner in the industry, ” which he professes is bad for everyone.
“ For these reasons, ” DiPietro continued, “ gamers can tend to look skeptically on the ecosystem because they don’t know what is paid-for content and what is not. It also opens influencers to potential criticism. ”
In order to indicate whether or not a stream is sponsored, streams will be tagged with new graphic additions to the front of videos: a “sponsored” tag, which will also extend to sponsored newsletters. Relevant tweets via Twitch, such as a stream announcement or update, will also be labelled as such if they’re also sponsored.
We’ll bring you more news on Twitch should further news reach our ears.
[ Twitch.Blog ]