When Dan Clancy took over as Twitch‘s CEO back in 2023, he ingratiated himself with the community by appearing on streams with a laid-back attitude and agreeing that the platform needed some changes.
One of those changes was the prevalence of pre-rolls–the ads that play upfront when a viewer clicks in on a stream. Viewers can get rid of pre-rolls by subscribing to a streamer, but recurring audience members aren’t the problem here; the problem is new viewers, who are faced with an ad barrier every time they want to check out a streamer who’s fresh to them.
Imagine this: You search for a game you like on Twitch and find a streamer who seems interesting and is playing that game. You don’t know for sure if you’ll like their content, though. So you click on their stream–only to be faced with an immediate ad. Some viewers will sit through it. Others will click away.
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When Clancy addressed pre-rolls in 2023, he said, “I don’t think that is the right experience when you’re trying to discover new content. When you are looking and are like, ‘Oh, let me check this out,’ and you are hit with an ad that inhibits you from going and browsing new stuff.”
Well, three years later, nothing has changed. And reporting from Zach Bussey this week suggested they may have gotten even worse.
On June 25, Bussey tweeted a screenshot of a conversation he had with Twitch Support, where a staffer told him pre-rolls can now be up to 90 seconds long (a jump from 30 seconds), and that mid-rolls may be as long as 4 minutes.
The staffer described the increases as “aggressive” and said they were “a result of newer changes.”
Twitch Preroll Ads may now be up to 90 seconds long, instead of 30.
Midroll Ads may now stretch to up to 4 minutes (even if the streamer sets them to 3 minutes).
via Twitch Support pic.twitter.com/oHDFvTaJAK
— Zach Bussey 🇨🇦 (@zachbussey) June 25, 2026
“Usually standard pre-rolls on Twitch were strictly 30 seconds long and as per the new update, they can be much longer, frequently scaling up to 90 seconds,” they continued.
But after Bussey posted the screenshot, Twitch’s official X account was quick to issue a correction. “Hey! This is inaccurate,” it wrote. “We’re still working to understand how/why our support team provided these durations, but we can confirm there are no changes to add additional ads or extend the ad pod beyond the creator settings for our Midroll Ads or Preroll Ads.”
Bussey countered by posting another screenshot–this one showing a 3-minute-and-14-second ad break live on Twitch. “Are you able to provide insight into why people are seeing 3-4 minute ad breaks?” he asked. “That would seem to reflect what your support team is saying. Myself, I’ve also been hit with 3:30 ad breaks recently.”
Twitch has not appeared to respond. There’s no explanation for why Bussey–and other people posting their own ad screenshots in response to Twitch’s tweet–are seeing longer marketing.
Whatever the explanation, though, the focus here should still be on the existence of pre-rolls. YouTube has them too, obviously, but YouTube runs on VODs. The content will still be there, unchanged, after a viewer sits through a 30-second ad. Twitch, on the other hand, relies on being able to get audience members into the stream in the moment, so they can experience what’s happening in real time.
There’s a balance to strike here. Creators need to make money, and ads are an inextricable part of the digital content revenue stream. But Twitch’s established discovery problems call for it to figure out a better way to onboard new viewers. We’re wondering if and when Clancy’s early cool-guy approach to leadership will pay off.
