How Twitch’s controversial safety move could affect brands

One of the most popular video game streaming platforms is making a dramatic change to how it moderates its content, which could significantly impact brands looking for opportunities to reach younger consumers in gaming. Twitch late last month terminated all members of its Safety Advisory Council, which is tasked with guiding decisions about trust and safety on the Amazon-owned gaming platform. A team of active Twitch users, referred to as “Twitch Ambassadors,” will now lead the effort. See Ad Age’s Tech Power List honoring marketing leaders Given Twitch’s already mired history with moderation, the sudden move is also a controversial one. The new community-led approach could change how brands are accepted on the platform, potentially pushing out unwanted marketers and requiring others to alter the ways they advertise. “Gamers are ruthless towards fakes and posers,” said Lewis Smithingham, executive VP of strategic industries, media, entertainment, games and sports at Media.Monks. “This is going to make it harder for advertisers because they could show up and get slaughtered.” A Twitch spokesperson told Ad Age, “We firmly believe that community feedback is critical to building balanced, informed and effective safety initiatives, and we’re looking forward to continuing these conversations in earnest.” Smithingham expects the new group of safety leaders to come down harder on brands than the previous council, demanding a level of authenticity and presence that they feel is beneficial to the platform. For example, brands could more frequently be called out on their political contributions, he said, since the values of the community are expected to be prioritized by the new safety team. The former safety council, which was created in 2020, was composed of nine industry advisors, including a cyberbullying expert and a professional diversity advocate. The new team is less official in its background, made up of streamers who “positively contribute to the Twitch community” via the platform’s Ambassadors program, according to Twitch. The size of the Ambassadors program—more than 170 members—could better suit Twitch’s moderation needs than the small council that formerly operated, Smithingham said. But brands, too, will come under the scope of this new procedure of policing. There will be more pressure on marketers to provide advertising experiences that are relevant to and desired by their audiences, meaning brands will have to deeply research and understand the community they’re targeting, said Smithingham. Check out the latest Ad Age events and award programs A brand such as Liquid Death would do well on the platform, he said, given its predilection for high-octane advertising that doesn’t take itself too seriously. “From a bigger brand perspective, [advertising] on community oriented platforms can be harder because you have to speak a truth, and it requires a very authentic, self-aware approach,” said Smithingham. To win over Twitch audiences, brands also need to leverage the interactive infrastructure that makes the platform so popular, said Barthélémy Kiss, co-founder and CEO of gaming editing company Powder. Kiss pointed to a recent effort from Unilever-owned Knorr, a German soup brand that used voice recognition technology to design a feature that would animate one of its products on a streamer’s screen should they say the brand’s name. Viewers then sent messages in the chat of a popular streamer, encouraging him to materialize the ad. Similarly, Mtn Dew last fall leveraged image recognition technology to identify and reward Twitch streamers that showed the brand’s products in their streams. While Twitch’s new safety changes may seem hostile to brands, Kiss said that the effect is the opposite—that Twitch is taking safety more seriously and thus embracing more opportunities for advertising. The reasoning is that by aligning moderation with the community’s needs, the platform is helping marketers to more easily know what their audiences want and offer ads that fit those interests. Read more: Mtn Dew surveils Twitch streamers in stunt Twitch has recently rolled out new updates that could further assist brands in the way they show up. An expansion made last month to Content Classification Labels (CCLs) will allow users to filter out streams from unwanted CCL categories, such as Mature-Rated Games and Sexual Themes. As a result, brands will have more confidence that their ads won’t appear besides content they deem inappropriate. Still, moderation—and thus, brand safety—remains a hot-button issue on Twitch. Last year, Amazon laid off Twitch employees tasked with monitoring content, spurring concerns that the platform wasn’t treating the matter as seriously as it should, according to Bloomberg. Twitch has long grappled with issues pertaining to child predators grooming young users on its platform, and despite efforts to solve the issue, perpetrators have only needed to shift their tactics. Both Smithingham and Kiss, however, are optimistic about the platform’s present and future as a destination for brands interested in gamers. “I don’t think Twitch is going to turn into 4chan,” Smithingham said, referring to the infamously toxic Internet forum.

How Twitch’s controversial safety move could affect brands

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