Twitch-ing For Advertisers

Twitch is to Amazon what YouTube is to Google; it is effectively Amazon’s live web streaming service that brings in gobs of subscription and advertising revenue.

On August 25, 2014, Amazon acquired Twitch Interactive for $970 million. Seeing as how nearly everything Amazon touches turns to gold, we’re not surprised by the incredible growth and worldwide success that Twitch has achieved!

Twitch offers a unique and engaging experience for its users by allowing gamers to interact with streamers during their live streams. Subscribers are able to watch their favorite gamers and personalities while communicating with them through chat, tipping and voting features – this creates a community within each streamers realm that keeps thousands of loyal fans continuously logging in to keep up with the latest happenings! Many streamers are live for 10+ hours a day, which makes it an endless portal for marketing and advertising on various schedules.

Not excited yet?

How about this: some ad campaigns have cycled through Twitch and achieved an incredible 68% of video completions, so it doesn’t take an expert to realize that Twitch is oozing with marketing potential. So far, in each month of 2019, Twitch has hosted more than 880 million hours of stream views. That is no small feat, and when it comes to advertising on Twitch, the audience is actually watching attentively – after all, they’re captive, highly engaged and passionate.

Twitch is all about gaming streams (although there are other things you can watch on the platform) and it seems like every single day there is another record being set by the video streaming platform giant. In April of 2018, Tyler “Ninja” Blevins set an all-time record of concurrent viewers on the site topping off at 667,000 people watching him play the hit game Fortnite all at once.

Video game streaming is a “must-explore” area for anyone looking for a way to reach the millennial and younger demographics as services like Twitch have so many eyes glued to them. Unlike other sporting events, e-sports are more easily accessible and played way more frequently than, say a football game. E-sports viewers speak the language of video, and so when a video ad plays during their viewing session, it grabs their attention more so than a TV ad would during a football game.

Another pro to advertising on Twitch is that typically when an individual is watching a stream on the platform, they do not switch channels during a commercial break like one would do while watching television.

The Audience

Twitch’s website describes its advertisement service as “Bringing brands, game publishers, and viewers together with strategic ad solutions in a social video environment.”

But who are you really reaching by advertising on Twitch?

Here’s a glimpse into the demographic of Twitches 15 million daily users that you can reach through advertising on the platform: 81.5% are male with 55% in between the ages of 18-34. On average, a Twitch user spends 95 minutes per day watching live gaming. That’s enough focused target demographic to make most marketers green with envy.

With predominately Gen Z and Millennial males flocking to Twitch in droves, it makes advertising on the platform simple by the fact that you can clearly know who will be seeing your ads, as opposed to the banner blindness across other platforms that often causes confusion.

The Future

Without going into too much detail here, the future of advertising on twitch looks very promising. Here are four quick points that show why Twitch will only continue to get better:

1. Twitch reaches over half of the millennial males in America, and it continues to grow!

2. There are several basic ways to advertise on Twitch (like with video ads or popups) as well as more creative and interactive ways (like by sponsoring streamers and teaming up with their marketing teams to promote your product during their sessions.) The mere fact that it’s such an engaging platform means that the advertising opportunities are endless.

3. Twitch CEO Emmet Shear projects $1 Billion ad revenue for 2019!

4. Many are predicting that Twitch will broaden its popularity and begin hosting live streams of other favorite hobbies such as cooking, home improvement, and arts and crafts – this will only open up more opportunity to reach valuable potential clients.All in all, marketing on Twitch can be an extremely powerful tool to increase brand awareness with a massive audience that is otherwise extremely difficult to reach through traditional advertising. For more info check out the Twitch website here.

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