George Popstefanov Weighs In On Twitch and Brand Safety

This month, a shooting at a German synagogue was live-streamed on Amazon’s Twitch platform and found its way to other sites. CNBC’s Megan Graham wrote an article published last week about the raised concerns from advertisers and their agencies about the ability of big tech companies to “keep scenes of violent rampages from spreading wildly.”

In the article, PMG CEO George Popstefanov said safety is particularly sensitive to Twitch because of its younger audience. “It’s serious just because it’s a global, massive audience and it’s a younger audience as well,” Popstefanov said. “It’s kind of the future of our world.”

According to the report, Twitch “shared the video hash, or a type of digital identifier, of the Germany incident with the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism, a group that aims to keep extremist violence off digital platforms. Some credited that move with preventing the video from spreading even more widely.” Popstefanov added that while Twitch’s ad service has been improving, “There’s a lot more opportunity to create levers for control.”