We introduced a purple screen to the Twitch embeddable player last year; teams have been working to improve this experience and viewers will begin to see the following changes starting today, November 7, 2022.
What’s changing?
The purple screen will be permanently removed from the embeddable player and replaced with a new experience. Now, viewers can expect to experience video spots when pre- and mid-roll ad breaks occur during the stream. A visual indicator that an advertisement is running, including a countdown timer, will also be present. A still image from one of these video spots can be seen below.
This update provides greater consistency between the embeddable player and the same channel on twitch.tv; it displays video spots when the broadcaster runs an ad break.
What action do developers need to take?
There is no widespread action required for developers. We have already reached out to developers who may need to take action.
If viewers are subscribed to a channel that has ad-free viewing enabled, will I see this ad experience in their embed?
No. If a viewer is logged into Twitch, their login session and subscription benefits are known to the Twitch embed. If they do not see ads for a channel on twitch.tv, their experience will be the same for embeds.
More questions?
Please feel free to ask questions about this change in the comments below.
Does “Video Spots” = Advertisements or A Basic Video Clip that is a placeholder for future video ads?
We are seeing the purple screen again, is it safe to say this is slowly being rolled out or would we have some cache issue that needs to be flushed?
Other / Suggestion
If its a basic video clip, that is waiting for the “EMBED” ad section to be filled, suggestion - Add a Link which says “Advertise your Video here!”
So possible viewers or agencies can buy that Ad Placement or “pod” as ya call it internally.
I keep hearing twitch maybe getting a self service ad platform up soon, so it will make sense if there is this option available.
The latter. “Video spots” refer to video clips displayed in the embeddable player to indicate when ad breaks are playing on the twitch.tv channel. The image above is a still image from one of these videos.
Good question, we could have made that clearer. This change is slowly rolling out over a short period of time to make sure there are no issues with the implementation. Therefore, there will be some time when both the purple screen and the new experience can occur, even for the same user. Eventually, the purple screen will be phased out entirely.
I will also pass along your additional feedback to the team working on embeds, thanks!
