Google's Creator Profiles, Kick Analytics, Streamers Shaping Culture + Ad Sale Struggles

Good morning (from Canada), and welcome to this week's newsletter! There's so much to cover this week, including Google's new Creator Profiles. It's a cool concept to give creators more control over their public search results, but the nature of search is changing on Google. My gut suggests this does more to help the AI with context/content accuracy than delivering direct discovery benefits to creators, but it's still probably worth doing if you're a creator with over 100K followers. In other spaces, The Information reports that Amazon Ads is struggling to sell Twitch Ads and is contracting out sales to third parties. For anyone who's NOT in the USA, this probably isn't shocking. The number of ads is limited (even here in Canada), so you either get the same few ads over and over again, or worse, you get hit with the "Commercial Break in Progress" screen. Regardless, Twitch's ad sales struggles are not new (2020). Will they ever solve this? My guess is no, as the platform's ad implementation isn't conducive to the content nor the viewing experience. So, there will always be high brand risk and poor ROI for advertisers. (PS. If Twitch has money for all these new AI features, surely they have money to pay creators a 70% sub split, no?)

And speaking of ads, if you find value in my work, please consider becoming a Premium member for less than the price of a Big Mac! AND now, let's get into the recap.

🟪 TWITCH

• Twitch is testing an AI tool to analyze your previous streams and provide actionable feedback.
• You can now become Sponsorship Certified, which will grant you 12 hours of early access to (the low-paying) sponsor offers. Do the test here.
• Twitch is testing 2-stream Watch Streaks instead of the 3-stream baseline.
• Twitch is testing Watch Streaks in your sidebar.
• You can now generate captions on clips. The captions become baked in after 30 days and currently lack editing or other customization options.
• Amazon Ads is reportedly leaning on third-party companies to sell ads on Twitch. Marketers hesitate to advertise on Twitch due to brand-safety concerns and view it as too niche. As a Canadian who usually sees the same 3 or 4 ads on repeat, not surprising...
• New Badges: RuneScape Event (1 Watch Time, 1 Paid), Rematch Nations Cup (1 Watch Time, 5 Paid)
• Twitch ran out of the digital Minecraft Builder Cape codes, but has occasionally released more as they became available from Mojang.

🟥 YOUTUBE

• YouTube/Google is launching Search Profiles, giving creators with over 100,000 followers (in the USA) access to customize what people see when searching them, including pinned videos and other accounts.
• YouTube launched a Creator Consultation across 27 EU countries.
• You will soon be able to add music to Community Post photos on YouTube.
• A publisher paywall may be coming soon for media outlets on YouTube in Europe.
• YouTube is ending its Product Tags in Posts experiment.

🟦 OTHER STREAMERS

• Streamlabs has launched Kick analytics into its dashboard.
• Kick is rolling out first-party analytics and Creator Media Kits for verified and Partnered creators.
• Kick has launched Level Up Badges that increase your level based on Watch Time across the entire platform.
• Whatnot is releasing a listing marketplace for creators and other retailers.