Exclusive: Key Advertisers Pause Spending Over Twitch Anti-Semitism Allegations

Confirmation that several companies and agencies have suspended advertising spending on the streaming platform following allegations of anti-Semitism

Under fire Twitch CEO Dan Clancy (photo courtesy of Dexerto)

According to sources familiar with the business dealings of Twitch a number of significant companies have paused their advertising spending with the streaming platform. The meetings were said to come as a direct result of allegations of anti-Semitism and featured representatives of the concerned companies, Twitch executives and Amazon executives. 

Twitch has been featured heavily in a slew of negative headlines around lenient moderation of alleged anti-Semitism that was compounded when it was revealed the company had geo-banned sign-ups from Israel following the attack on October 7th by Hamas. Twitch explained this “error” by stating they had “temporarily disabled sign ups with email verification in Israel and Palestine” in order to “prevent uploads of graphic material related to the attack and to protect the safety of users.” Similar measures were not and have not been taken in a number of other regions affected by global conflict, most notably Ukraine following its invasion by Russia.

In the aftermath of the reporting Twitch found itself under public pressure to take action against the alleged rise of anti-Semitism on its platform. The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) posted a statement on X.com that said the following:

“Twitch must learn from this situation and improve how they address anti-Semitism and hate on the platform, which is an ongoing and significant challenge. We encourage Twitch to take meaningful action, such as collaborating with the platform’s Jewish community, providing staff, streamers and moderators with anti-Semitism training and updating how they review programming for their live events. We will continue to engage with the company to help ensure the platform is a safe, respectful and inclusive space for all. We will also continue to hold them accountable when they fail in that responsibility.”

As part of this response the aforementioned meetings were to assuage concerns that the companies could continue to advertise on the Twitch platform and not have their ads be placed adjacent to content that was deemed anti-Semitic or in some other way hateful. While Twitch did outline a plan to combat this potential issue, responses to the meeting provided to this publication show that Twitch downplayed the severity of the allegations. In the aftermath of the meetings this publication was also shown communications that state several Amazon executives are not in agreement with this assessment provided by Twitch. One stated that they felt the Twitch executive body were not showing sufficient concern and described Dan Clancy’s response as being significantly inadequate.

A list of companies and agencies that paused their spending, which was provided under assurances it would not be publicly published, showed eleven corporations and agencies that represent multiple companies. One source added that while they had heard public claims of high volumes of advertisers withdrawing spending they said a fairer characterisation of the response would be “limited but not insignificant.” 

A separate source with knowledge of the meetings was able to confirm that one of the upset advertisers was the American multinational energy corporation Chevron. In recent years the company has not only spent money to be advertised through Twitch initiatives but have also sponsored esports teams. The source claimed their ire was triggered once a clip of streamers rating content creators from “Arab” to “Loves Sabra” went viral with their logo prominently displayed in the background. Chevron has undertaken a number of projects in Israel to help expand the country’s infrastructure and energy independency.

“After the clip from the panel went viral Chevron was very angry” one Twitch employee explained. “Having their logo in the background of a clip being used as an example of anti-Semitism prompted some very awkward conversations.”

The same source also confirmed that the timing had not been great for Twitch as they were already under pressure to hit deliverables for advertising on the platform. 

“The measures taken to ensure that ads aren’t served next to hateful content are going to make it harder to hit targets” they elaborated.

While they added that Twitch downplayed the concerns in the meetings afterwards their plan of action was to create a new labelling system for content that might be inappropriate for advertisers. The “Politics and Sensitive Social Issues” tag not only allows viewers to opt out of seeing content with that label but also allows for brands and advertisers to opt out of having their ads run on channels that contain content of this nature. While this has been deemed sufficient for some of the companies that initially had reservations others have deemed this insufficient and their spending remains paused.

“Some see it as covering up the problem rather than addressing it” the source added “and so they’re not coming back to the platform until something more direct happens.” 

This initial measure has been compared to the same way YouTube dealt with a similar advertiser boycott in 2017. That was prompted by an advertising executive, Eric Feinberg, using a machine learning tool to locate when ads were being ran on extremist content. In the aftermath YouTube created a much more stringent advertising system where content was scanned for anything deemed inappropriate and automatically prevented from displaying advertisements on that content. The subsequent drop in revenue was termed the “adpocalypse” and was heavily criticised by many in the YouTube community that were affected despite their content not being comparable to that which triggered the original advertiser withdrawal.

While it isn’t clear how much of an impact these changes will have on the amount of revenue Twitch streamers can generate, there are likely to .be some short term losses while the systems are implemented and balanced.