by by: David Gugliotti
www.linkedin.com/in/DavidGMBA
Twitch is currently one of the largest streaming platforms in the world. Primarily catering to gamers and esports, Twitch has expanded into music, culinary, art, TV shows, Talk shows, IRL Streams, and even the NFL.
Twitch is unique in the fact that every channel has a live chat room built into it where users can converse with the streamer directly. This creates an unprecedented level of connection and interaction that traditional media cannot reach. Many Twitch streamers, like Ollie Beanz, are considered major influencers and celebrities in their respective audiences.
Some high-level Twitch streamers such as Summit, Pokimane, Shroud, and Sneaky, pull in thousands of viewers and thus, have attracted lucrative sponsorship deals from various entities. As an example, Pokimane, an extremely popular streamer who has won various awards that primarily plays League of Legends and Fortnite, peaked at over 77,000 concurrent viewers for her 1 hour long sponsored stream by the NFL at the Pro-Bowl, has over 3 million subscribers to her YouTube channel, and over 3 million followers on Instagram. There are a slew of other streamers with large communities that consume hours of content by these individuals daily.
Though most companies sponsoring Twitch streamers are endemic to gaming such as, iBUYPOWER or Logitech, non-endemic companies are jumping in such as Geico, Chipotle, Dr Pepper, GrubHub, and others.
These companies value the fact that streamers have a unique relationship with their viewers which presents a high confidence level in the authenticity of the streamer’s recommendations. In fact, should a streamer do a “sponsored stream” the regulations of Twitch force the streamer to say so in the title of the stream. Similar rules (sometimes unwritten but applied for the sake of authenticity) apply for social media channels of the streamers as well.
So if a company wants to connect directly with a highly engaged audience that skews younger, higher educated, from a lucrative household, and that values authenticity, they could do much worse than looking into sponsoring a streamer.
Oh, I have been missing out on so much without Twitch! It is interesting that authenticity is increased with streamers, maybe because it’s live and the ability to edit is removed. People see the actual person under stress. Hmm.
David,
I am not a gamer and have not used Twitch before but it seems like a great way to sell the younger generation. But that kind of worries me because is it ethical to target the younger demographic? How old is old enough to sell things to young people? In different countries it is illegal to target youth for ads and such. Should the United States think about doing something like this?