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Twitch did this a few years ago. Amazon Prime used to give you ad-free viewing, but they ended that. I believe the reason was so they could grow their ad busi

Twitch did this a few years ago. Amazon Prime used to give you ad-free viewing, but they ended that. I believe the reason was so they could grow their ad business. Likewise, If too many people buy Premium, they won't be able to sell as many ad spots. Plus, the people who actually pay for Premium probably make heavy use of YouTube. My guess is that they'll instead start increasing the price of Premium to get more people to give it up.

daveguy 4y ago
You have just summarized every SaaS in the last 10 years. A froghop to higher profits. I wonder if there's a better way to do it.
- bombcar 4y ago
  There is but it involves ignoring VC and bootstrapping. But even that can get acquired.
  - daveguy 4y ago
    Is there a vaccine against acquisition?
    - bombcar 4y ago
      There are some. You can make the company a non-profit (tricky) or be a sole owner (simpler) or massively poison-pill it. Most also hamper investors, of course.
kmsn 4y ago
Crosseye_Jack 4y ago
They still have a site wide ad free option. It’s Twitch Turbo. Back in the day before Amazon brought out Twitch turbo would give ad free viewing plus a few extra perks (different emotes, full RBG setting for colouring your username). When they launch Twitch Prime (now rebranded as Prime Gaming) as a benefit for Amazon Prime they copied the feature set from Turbo and added a free subscription to a streamer of your choice. So most people swapped from Turbo to Prime. They stopped pushing Turbo and hit its purchase page but if you looked closely enough you could find it. But prime wasn’t really a money maker, sure it was a benefit to the viewer but it was an extremely generous offer (helped soften the blow that Amazon just brought everyone’s fav gamer streaming platform) But yeah it was tanking ad impressions (which they have were trying to expand the ad business during this time) cause you know you know a sub token worth 5 bucks, ad free viewing and all the other benefits of Amazon prime for what 8 bucks a month. You were a fool not to swap from the existing Turbo offering to Prime, and if you didn’t have Amazon Prime but you already sub’ed to atleast one streamer a month it was only a few extra bucks a month compared to what you were already paying. So they removed the ad free viewing from Prime gaming and started pushing Turbo again for another 9 bucks a month.

daveguy 4y ago

You have just summarized every SaaS in the last 10 years. A froghop to higher profits. I wonder if there's a better way to do it.

bombcar 4y ago
There is but it involves ignoring VC and bootstrapping. But even that can get acquired.
- daveguy 4y ago
  Is there a vaccine against acquisition?
  - bombcar 4y ago
    There are some. You can make the company a non-profit (tricky) or be a sole owner (simpler) or massively poison-pill it. Most also hamper investors, of course.

kmsn 4y ago

Crosseye_Jack 4y ago

They still have a site wide ad free option. It’s Twitch Turbo. Back in the day before Amazon brought out Twitch turbo would give ad free viewing plus a few extra perks (different emotes, full RBG setting for colouring your username). When they launch Twitch Prime (now rebranded as Prime Gaming) as a benefit for Amazon Prime they copied the feature set from Turbo and added a free subscription to a streamer of your choice. So most people swapped from Turbo to Prime. They stopped pushing Turbo and hit its purchase page but if you looked closely enough you could find it. But prime wasn’t really a money maker, sure it was a benefit to the viewer but it was an extremely generous offer (helped soften the blow that Amazon just brought everyone’s fav gamer streaming platform) But yeah it was tanking ad impressions (which they have were trying to expand the ad business during this time) cause you know you know a sub token worth 5 bucks, ad free viewing and all the other benefits of Amazon prime for what 8 bucks a month. You were a fool not to swap from the existing Turbo offering to Prime, and if you didn’t have Amazon Prime but you already sub’ed to atleast one streamer a month it was only a few extra bucks a month compared to what you were already paying. So they removed the ad free viewing from Prime gaming and started pushing Turbo again for another 9 bucks a month.