Behind The Scenes: Angelo Damiano

Powerspike’s CEO on the past, present, and future of Twitch

Angelo “AJ” Damiano is the CEO of Powerspike, creating the company back in 2015. His idea was to create a platform that merges influencer marketing with programmatic advertising, enabling brands to create an influencer campaign just like they’d make a media buy.

What are your goals for Powerspike?

Our vision for Powerspike is all about creating accessibility.

We want to help provide creators everywhere with the financial means to turn their passions for content creation into a full-time career. We want to see a world where deserving creators, whether they are Twitch streamers, Mommy Bloggers, Beauty Stars, or anything in between has access to sponsorship and brand opportunities, and more consistent income streams. Typically these brand partnerships can make up to 35% of a creator's income — we want to make these partnerships more accessible to creators of all sizes.

For brands, we want to make the process of working with creators as simple, and seamless as possible. Buying this sort of media from an advertiser's perspective is challenging, and time-consuming today — it often requires a full-time team to operate. We want to make working with creators more accessible, and re-invent the process to make it as simple as buying other media in their arsenal.

Favorite Twitch moment?

Hah! There are so many good ones — between watching Trick2G open the gates with Udyr, or Complexity Limit down world-first Sire, or when everyone tuned in to watch Bob Ross paint for a week — it’s hard to choose.

In all honesty, I’d say my favorite moment was the night Pianoimproman blew up on Twitch. Here was a small streamer, in the new music category on Twitch, that very few people had heard of at the time who was streaming to maybe 20–25 people.

All of a sudden, this guy starts getting hosted by every major streamer on Twitch, until he has over 100,000+ people watching him play the piano for the night. It was like the world paused and for one night we were all together as a community. I thought that was so awesome, and one of the best moments I ever got to experience on Twitch.

What games are you currently playing?

World of Warcraft Burning Crusade Classic, League of Legends, Warzone, and the New World Alpha.

How long have you been watching Twitch?

Honestly, since it was called Justin.tv way back in 2010–2012 when gaming live streaming was just becoming a thing. I also watched a bit of MLG TV when that was a thing early in 2013/14. I started streaming on Twitch in 2013 and worked on a number of esports tournaments in 2014.

What should advertisers know about Twitch?

Twitch is a hyper-engaged platform with everything happening live and in the moment. Authenticity is key to success with Twitch — prepacked scripts and prerecorded videos don’t work.

Being successful on Twitch is very hard, it takes a lot of time, and more than any other platform the creators need to be deeply in touch with their community to make it work. Leave the messaging up to the creator, they know what messaging will reach their community and what will not.

Be clear on your goals and what you want the creator to accomplish for you. Don’t worry about swearing or trying to control every part of the endorsement. It’s live for a reason, serendipity, authenticity, and spontaneity are what make Twitch great.

As it stands right now, Twitch is primarily best suited for upper-funnel brand awareness and lift. The average viewer spends 20+ hours a week watching and engaging with streamers. If a creator says something, it resonates.

Try to pair the awareness and brand lift you receive on Twitch with direct response on other platforms like Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok. Creators build their audiences on multiple platforms, taking a multi-channel approach is the best way to achieve great results. Keep an eye out — with some of the exciting things Powerspike has coming out later this year, Twitch will start to move more down the funnel and work for direct response.

Lastly, be patient. Like any other social channel, it takes time to perfect and find the right creators who really align with your brand. Once you find them, it can be one of the most powerful social channels in your arsenal, but you will need to optimize it overtime to get it right.

Which streamer has impressed you the most recently?

Asmongold for sure — we did a talk show together back in 2014/2015 when he was still early in his streaming career and I was still doing WoW shoutcasting/tournament organization — it’s been so cool to watch him grow and blow up to be one of the top streamers on the platform.

We took much different career paths with him staying a streamer and me going to work more on the backend/support side of the industry, but I’m just really fucking happy for him and what he’s been able to do.

Where do you see Twitch in 5 years?

Twitch is likely going to continue pushing into other categories beyond gaming. The platform has already built out successful communities in Crypto, Food, Music, and Art. Twitch has also secured deals with the NFL for Thursday night football, and MMA fights also pulling in crazy viewership

Expect then to continue going down this route — within 5 years it wouldn’t be surprising to see the Superbowl and other major sporting events streamed live on Twitch.

When did you realize Twitch was changing the video game industry?

I think serendipity is a powerful thing. Looking back it was probably in 2012 when we were just kids watching Sodapoppin or Reckful streaming World of Warcraft. We didn’t realize they were changing the video game industry, we were just laughing and having fun.

What is your dream Twitch advertising campaign?

For us, I think leading the gaming strategy of a major CPG brand or Fortune 1,000 is incredible. Not just for one-off advertising campaigns, but for a multi-year, fully integrated approach.

Yes, quarterly campaigns are cool and all, and they can get a lot of exciting traction, but honestly, there’s so much more than you can do if you just commit to a strategy in the gaming space. You can really get incredible results if you have the budget laid out, upfront, for a long time. Long-term integrations with smaller, deserving creators at scale can be planned. Massive announcements and exciting lightning strike-style events can be executed. Events, tournaments, and in-person events can be utilized.

The community can truly get to know and fall in love with your brand — and the results will be about 100x better than anything you could do on a quarterly basis.

Being able to truly lead a fully integrated approach, from setting up dedicated socials to partnering with brand ambassadors, creating huge events, and evangelizing the brand on a large scale into the community over the course of a long period of time — we truly believe that is where the magic happens.