eSports for the win: why Twitch is a dream come true for marketers & content creators in the digital world
There are sports and then there are eSports. There’s traditional broadcasting and then there’s the internet. Twitch — the eSports and video-game and live-streaming website — represents the culmination of those new digital trends. But, with Twitch receiving 150 million monthly viewers, it’s hard to say that eSports and live-streaming video games are “trends” any longer. As the numbers suggest, they’re here to stay. And, for marketers and content creators, they’re also the future.
Live-streaming? Videogames? What exactly is Twitch?
If you’re wondering that, good question!
Imagine Twitch as an online ESPN for the world of videogames and eSports. Twitch allows gamers to stream live-feeds of themselves playing and commentating on video games while giving viewers the chance to watch and, often, interact with live-streaming gamers and each other through chat rooms. Additionally, Twitch streams competitive video game events, known as eSports — many of which offer cash prizes of up to 10 million US dollars — for a variety of video games.
Here are the facts about Twitch worth noting
Up to 15 million unique viewers tune into Twitch every day for an average 95 minutes per person to watch and listen to over 2.2 million gamers play everything from first-person shooters, like Fortnite, to digitized role-playing, card, and board games, like Sims, Magic, and online chess (respectively). Twitch, purchased by Amazon in 2014 for just shy of a billion dollars, streams all of it to over 150 million monthly viewers — 55% of which are men between the ages of 18 and 34.
With over two million viewers at the site’s peak use, Twitch crushes competition like MSNBC and CNN, which each top out at 885,000 and 783,000 viewers respectively. Twitch even attracts more viewers than both Fox News and ESPN, each of which records about 1.5 million viewers at their peaks.
What makes Twitch ripe for advertising?
For starters, subscription services, ads played before and during videos, and sponsorship opportunities for eSports gamers and events all give advertisers access to a unique market that utilizes ad blockers and refrains from watching traditional TV, making the market difficult to reach otherwise.
With Twitch consistently proving itself as an effective means for reaching this significant and engaged market, media publishers, like Cheddar, The Washington Post, and BuzzFeed, are all beginning to experiment with creating new forms of content on Twitch that go beyond ads.
Here’s The Post, Cheddar, & BuzzFeed approach to Twitch
Breaking from the usual Twitch mold, The Washington Post recently experimented with released two shows, “Playing Games with Politicians” and “Live with Libby Casey,” that focus more on delivering news than gaming content. True to form, Twitch’s community members, according to The Post, have been actively commenting and conversing through the live chat rooms on both shows, even going so far as to ask questions and explain current events between one another as a community.
Cheddar and BuzzFeed, on the other hand, focus their efforts on producing gaming content similar to what made Twitch popular among viewers in the first place. Through Twitch, Cheddar streams a daily eSports show, cleverly named, “Cheddar Esports,” while BuzzFeed streams its own shows three times a week through its “BuzzFeed Multiplayer” channel.
While Cheddar, The Post, and BuzzFeed earn revenue from video ads played during their live streams, each media producer places equal value on feedback and direct live engagement with the vocal and active community of viewers on Twitch. All three prioritize responding directly to their viewers through live chat and, through those interactions, learn from and build rapport with, again, a unique and otherwise hard to reach market.
With short-form content platforms, like Tik-Tok, rising in popularity, Twitch offers a long-form counterbalance that proves incredibly popular among a loyal, vocal, and committed fanbase and community. In the end, that might be Twitch’s greatest marketable asset — a community of viewers that repeatedly returns to consume content and engage with influencers, content creators, brands, and each other.
That being said, here’s how brands, marketers, and content creators can take action to make the most of the opportunities provided through Twitch.
The Takeaway:
- Experiment. With any emerging platform — even a platform with proven success, like Twitch — you need to get on it and be willing to try something new.
- Instead of going the typical advertiser route (pay to play), try creating organic content the way Cheddar, The Post, and BuzzFeed do. What value can you provide to attract new users, viewers, and followers?
- Don’t try too hard. The Twitch community can sniff out a fake from a mile away. They respond best to authenticity. If your brand doesn’t have an “in,” think of one or throw in the towel and take a traditional approach (airing ads on live streams).
Want to learn more? Feel free to reach out at any time. We would love to chat!
The above piece was written by Connor Beck in collaboration with Carter Jensen and the Latitude research team.
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Resources and original reporting of the above points covered by the following publications — Twitch, Syracuse University, Business of Apps, Digiday
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