Are you familiar with Twitch? This streaming platform which offers live video broadcasting is growing at an accelerating pace.Launched in 2011 by the streaming site Justin.tv to offer specialized video game web streams, including eSports, the platform quickly overshadowed its parent site and, in 2014, was acquired by Amazon. According to Twitch’s annual report, in 2017, more than 124 million videos were broadcast on the platform and its users spent more than 355 billion minutes watching them. We also assist to the birth of gaming influencers, interacting with their communities and earning their admiration.
Among the 2 million users who broadcast one or more videos each month, over twenty thousand can already boast of earning an income. There are several ways streamers can make money on Twitch.
Players who meet certain conditions (having at least 50 subscribers and broadcasting a certain number of minutes regularly each month) can become official Twitch affiliates and partners.
Players can also earn a portion of the advertising revenue from their streams, as is the case on YouTube, and receive direct donations via PayPal. The fact that Twitch users choose to give money to their favorite players shows how strong the relationship is between them.
Last year, Twitch streamer Tyler Blevins, better known as Ninja, his online nickname, earned over $500,000 a month thanks to his Fortnite streams. He attributes his success to his high level gaming skills and the entertainment potential his streams offer his audience.
According to Twitch data, 81.5% of the platform’s users are male and 55% are between 18 and 34 years old, which makes Twitch a great way to reach a market that is sometimes difficult to access on social media. The streamers’ followers are known to be very engaged and players develop a real relationship with their audience of viewers, with the most popular streamers often broadcasting live videos for several hours, several times a week.
Twitch data also reveals that 82% of its users believe that brand partnerships and sponsorships are good for the industry and 80% of them are open to seeing players and gamer teams being sponsored by brands.
Video game brands already leverage strategic partnerships with streamers to promote new game launches, but brands that are not directly part of the gaming world can also partner with influential players. For instance, KFC boosted the popularity of the expression Winner Winner, Chicken Dinner in the gaming world by offering fried chicken to the audiences of famous streamers.
It is also possible to co-create original and entertaining brand content with players, such as the brand activation by Snickers in 2015, a prank which saw three streamers playing badly for an hour, becoming worse as they got hungrier, and donning a costume before eating a Snickers bar and becoming themselves again – bringing to life the famous brand motto: You’re not you when you’re hungry.
The key to a successful brand campaign on Twitch is to make sure there is a good brand fit with the player and its audience, and to aim for follower engagement, which is the strength of this platform.
Since Fall 2018, Twitch has replaced generic IRL (In real life) and Creative content tags with a dozen more precise mainstream streaming categories such as art, food and drink, crafts, music, travel, beauty, science, sports and podcasts. While these new categories are still niche with small followings, the move shows their popularity is expected to grow.
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