TheQuartering [5/24/2021]
It looks like the tub meta has crushed the ad revenue for a particular kind of streamer.
Video platforms, such as Twitch, became giants because they fed viewers unique content. Content creators could throw ideas at the internet wall, and some stuck. Because of its creator focus, ease of access, and the number of approaches, countless videos or streams catered to different tastes. As these internet businesses pivot to becoming more mainstream, one group’s opinion becomes louder — the advertisers. These factors (and more) are at play in Twitch streamer Amouranth’s recent ad suspension.
It all began with the creation of the so-called hot tub meta. xoAeriel purchased a blow-up hot tub in December 2020, customized it with LED lights, and started to do Twitch streams from it. Her views surged. In the competitive streaming environment, any new developments draw attention; soon others began doing their own hot tub streams, creating a new meta.
The Pokimane OfflineTV hot tub stream of 14 May 2021, which mocked the popular streaming approach, took the Twitch record for the most viewers after breaking 100,000 concurrents. Still, Kaitlyn “Amouranth” Siragusa remained the most well-known steamer to be a regular user of the hot tub meta, gaining almost a million followers in a 3-month period. All of a sudden, on the 17th of May, Twitch rescinded Amouranth’s ability to run ads on Twitch. She wrote in a Twitter post:
Although content may not ostensibly break community guidelines or Terms of service, Twitch has complete discretion to target individual channels & partially or wholly demonetized them for content that is deemed “not advertiser friendly”, something that there is no communicated guideline for.