Twitch will be giving much-needed consideration to how easy it is to find your favorite streamers without having to put up with annoying pre-roll ads before you watch.

In an open letter (opens in new tab) on Twitch's 2023 outlook, Chief Product Officer Tom Verrilli and Chief Monetization Officer Mike Minton detail all the features and changes they plan to introduce.

Currently, Twitch streamers need to run a certain amount of mid-stream ads to disable the pre-roll ads that appear when clicking on a channel. 90 second long ads can be run without pre-roll ads, a common barrier to gaining new viewers 30 minutes of time.

Twitch plans to simplify this requirement in the first half of this year so that streamers who run three minutes of ads per hour will not see ads. The amount of required ads will remain the same, but there may be fewer pre-roll ads in general due to easier management on the part of the streamer. In addition, when ads are displayed, Twitch will use a picture-in-picture feature to allow the viewer to peek into the stream while the ads are playing.

Viewers will soon be alerted before a mid-roll ad is about to play during a stream and will be able to "snooze" it to possibly play later; Twitch will also remove ads from the site with an $8.99 per month subscription service Twitch Turbo, and said it is working to make it "better and more relevant to our community."

The increased focus on ads is the beginning of all the ways Twitch will make it easier for streamers to browse and search this year; Twitch tags will have their own URL added on top of the existing front page curation, making it easier to find topics they like, and mobile users will be able to scroll through clips with TikTok-like functionality.

On the streamer side, they will be able to pin up to 20 clips to their channel page and will have editing tools for publishing on social media. There will also be the ability to send videos and clips to followers and subscribers, similar to YouTube's community posts. In addition, "Creator Home" will analyze tags and show the best times to stream certain categories and games.

All of this feels like an effort by Twitch to recognize streamers' best practices and incorporate them directly into the platform, rather than relying on influencer word of mouth or third-party services. As it becomes easier for streamers to capitalize on trends and promote themselves, it should also become easier to find people they enjoy watching.

But the price, of course, is the amount of effort required to stand out on a busy platform used by thousands of people every day. Making streaming work is increasingly difficult, and in a few months, Twitch will force a 50/50 revenue split (open in new tab) on everyone on the platform. Meanwhile, some of the most popular creators have expanded to TikTok (opens in new tab) or signed deals to stream exclusively on YouTube.

However, Twitch remains the king of streaming, and most of its plans for 2023 seem to have Twitch firmly ensconced on the throne.