Mixer, Microsoft’s Twitch competitor has finally started to introduce ads on the platform. The company announced the news during during its weekly “Level Up Cast” show last Friday (via The Verge), where the hosts explained that ads would appear first on Microsoft’s own Mixer channels, as well as those from Mixer partners.
Mixer users with a Pro subscription won’t see any ads on the site, subscribers to a Mixer partner channel will also enjoy an ad-free experience on these partnered channels. The first ads appearing on Mixer will benefit Microsoft, and it’s not clear yet if the company plans to eventually share ad revenue with Mixer partners.
Two months ago, Mixer co-founder Matt Salsamendi explained on Reddit that the company had already started giving additional ad revenue to partners even though the platform still had no advertisement service in place:
We started running a few experiments on ads recently. Our partners already receive what we call “synthetic ad revenue”, basically, we pay as though their viewers see ads (even though they don’t) to make up for the missing revenue in the mean time. Ads are part of the “long term plan” but no immediate announcements yet.
Microsoft recently spent an undisclosed amount of money to get Twitch superstar Ninja to start streaming exclusively on Mixer, and the popular creator has brought a lot of new eyeballs to the platform at a time when it wasn’t clear if Mixer was really sustainable. It’s apparently time for Microsoft to start monetizing Mixer more aggressively, though we probably won’t see as many ads as on YouTube or Twitch anytime soon.
