Earlier this week, an ad agency made waves when it tweeted about a Burger King campaign that used Twitch's donation feature to score cheap on-stream plugs. As far as I know, this campaign was not against the rules, but it was even greasier than the Double Whopper.

The ad took advantage of a popular feature offered by Streamlabs, which gives viewers the option to donate to Twitch streamers in exchange for having a personalized message read out loud by a text-to-speech plug-in. Viewers can donate a minimum of $1, type in their message, and hear it spoken live on the stream by a robotic voice. to hear their message read out loud."

Amazing! This tool could also be used by multi-billion dollar global corporations to literally pimp their meals for pennies on the dollar.

Clever in theory: Burger King could get promotion on multiple streams, and the only cost would be a series of small donations to streamers, not expensive sponsorship deals. However, abusing a system intended for personal use to avoid paying the appropriate fees for online advertising was never going to work.

Burger King (technically its parent company, Restaurant Brands International) probably paid big bucks to the ad agency behind the campaign.

At the very least, BK could have paid a reasonable amount for the readings. One of the streamers, Ross O'Donovan, was unhappy with his role in the matter.

Ironically, the number of people directly exposed to the ad on Twitch would have been relatively small, but the uproar on social media made it more visible. The ad actually appeared on BK's YouTube channel in early July, but the majority of the comments were posted within the last 24 hours.

Perhaps this is the natural evolution of playful brand engagement in social media. Brands and advertising agencies aim to sell products, not to be our friends, but if it means being able to bypass proper sponsorship deals for cheap advertising, they will no doubt pretend to be our friends.

Update: The ads were not only sketchy, but also violated StreamLab's Terms of Service. The terms of use specifically prohibit "using the site for commercial or promotional purposes," which includes displaying unauthorized commercial advertising or "attempting to post commercial messages or advertisements."

The TOS also lists as prohibited content "commercial activity and/or sales without the prior written consent of Stream Labs. I asked Stream Labs what action they intended to take if there were violations.