Twitch: Influencer Marketing at eye level

The proximity of the streamers to their subscribers makes Twitch a coveted platform for brand managers, also beyond the gaming and esports area.

While writing this, instead of fully focusing on this text I’m watching a young woman playing an ukulele - it is live - and she is singing “Stand By Me”. The stream of another live video starts on another channel, in which you can watch the creator harvest his field in a farming simulator. It's about Twitch. The platform, which has become famous and big thanks to the live streaming of games and esports events, has meanwhile become so broad that everyone can find something that interests them - no matter how absurd it may be.

But the passive sprinkling is not what distinguishes the platform. It lives through its communities and the close ties between viewers and streamers. Users can follow their favorite streamers (as a newbie you can buy Twitch followers), support them financially with paid subscriptions and thereby activate special features. Donations during the live stream are practically good form. The chat running in parallel offers the possibility that viewers not only interact with one another, but can also communicate with the streamer; it gives them the chance to exchange ideas with the streamer, ask questions and use their feedback to directly influence what happens next.

Twitch is not only an exciting platform for the streamers themselves, who can earn money through the affiliate and partner programs with the appropriate subscriber numbers. The proximity that streamers build to their communities via the platform offers enormous marketing potential. The target group is young, predominantly male and difficult to reach on other channels. With 15 million unique users worldwide every day, marketing on Twitch can be done in a variety of ways, with the classic display of pre-roll ads being the most boring form of advertising. With the number of ads that people are exposed to on social media daily, ad fatigue is a serious problem to overcome for brands. Twitch is no exception. What is ad fatigue? Ad fatigue is the result of your ads being too similar and monotonous. Consequently, your audience gets bored and starts skipping them or, worse, becomes so annoyed that it starts affecting your brand image. However, I will be happy to give you an example of brands that used creativity to prevent ad fatigue. In the past, major automobile manufacturers have used Twitch to present new models, for example, packaged as an exciting mission that has to be solved with the help of the audience. The US burger chain Wendy’s itself repeatedly gets into popular games such as Fortnite or Animal Crossing to show its displeasure with freezers - while thousands of fans watch. The message: only fresh meat is used at Wendy's.

"DONATIONS BELONG TO THE GOOD SOUND"

Of course, working together here requires good preparatory work. As with all influencer deals, target group fit, the credibility of the partnership and the way in which the product is integrated should be carefully considered and coordinated. However, if the conditions are right, Twitch has a community that is open to sponsorship and is even grateful to brands for the support of their favorite streamers. The only thing you shouldn't do is like Burger King: They hijacked the donation function without prior coordination in order to place their products in the livestreams of various users in an effective way. They received the receipt promptly: The burger chain caused irritation and annoyance among users, who felt they had been exploited and then vented their anger on Twitter.