What is the advantage of live streaming & video platforms?

Twitch & Youtube offer a variety of analytics tools that are almost unique in the marketing industry. Depending on the type of campaign, various statistics can be consulted to measure the generated reach.
Twitch & Youtube themselves already offer the possibility to track the following statistics:

•Minutes viewed

•Average viewers

•Streaming time

•Live-Views

•Maximum viewers

•Individual viewers

•Unique chat participants

These statistics can be recorded for each stream individually, or for a certain period of time. This makes it possible to perfectly track the generated reach of the stream and thus also of a placement.

In addition, there is the attribute capability of the digital content around it. It is possible to store performance links that are branded to a certain streamer, so the clicks on the link can be tracked by the streamer. You can use different links for different positions of an advertising massage (panel under the stream vs. chat bot) to better track the effectiveness of the individual measures. In addition, this makes it easy to perform a device check to track whether the potential customer is using a mobile device or not; a distinction can also be made here between Android and iOS.

The successes of an offline campaign are more difficult to measure and, above all, offline campaigns often have much longer lead times. Short-term changes are therefore usually only possible with an enormously high cost.

Twitch marketing offers the most flexible of all media. Here, content can be designed and adapted as individually as possible.

In addition, some features and instruments of performance marketing can be used. Especially for smaller streamers whose reach is still manageable, affiliate measures offer a great hedge against the brand. Branded links can be used to track conversion and traffic in order to measure the success of the campaign and to link the remuneration to it. This is a popular tool, especially in the Twitch area. However, as the reach of the streamers increases, the interest in such instruments decreases. In most cases, a mixture of fixed compensation and performance bonuses can be found, which serves as motivation for the streamer to maximize his advertising efforts, as well as for the brand to only have to pay over and above the original compensation if certain milestones are reached. These milestones are permanently adjustable and serve as mutual security between brand and streamer.

Furthermore, one of the biggest advantages of marketing on Twitch & YouTube remains the effective use of the budget compared to classic offline marketing. Here, there is the possibility to address a much larger target group with significantly less budget.

Another advantage is the double content usage. If the influencer uses or presents a product in a stream or video, there is always the possibility to use the resulting material for the brand’s own channels, whether for YouTube, Instagram or Twitter. In this way, the content that has already been created can continue to be used for other marketing measures of the brand, especially on its own social media channels.

Growth of the live streaming market

Covid-19 had a gigantic impact on our daily lives, but not only in a negative way. Since the outbreak of the pandemic in 2020, live streaming platforms like Twitch in particular have benefited from the lockdown.

Even though the platform already had a gigantic viewership before, it was able to reach completely new milestones just at the end of 2020 – a doubling of viewership compared to Q4 2019.

But not only Twitch was able to use the time to enable extreme growth, YouTube Gaming achieved to double its “watched hours” compared to Q4 2019.

There’s no end in sight here, and live streaming platforms like Twitch will continue to gain relevance even after the pandemic subsides.

Quick Facts:

• Number of “Watched Hours of Live Streaming” increased from 15.6 billion hours (Q4 2019) to 28 billion (Q4 2020)
•Twitch set a new record in Q4 2020 with 5.44 billion Watched Hours per quarter
•Twitch reaches 90.2% market share in hours streamed

What is the composition of the pricing?

The costs of a digital campaign are made up of several points: not only is the mere reach of an influencer paid for, but also its authenticity, the development of the community, the moderation and, above all, the engagement, not only between the community and the brand, but also between the streamer and the brand. These are all factors that play a role in pricing a campaign.

Instagram, VOD or live streaming?

Due to the permanent interaction of a viewer with the stream, on average over 90 minutes per day, Twitch/Youtube is also preferable to Instagram in many ways here. While Instagram posts and stories are often only fleetingly perceived and therefore often not viewed a second time after one glance, the advertising measure on Twitch & Youtube is constantly present.

The value of live viewers in particular is therefore much higher than the value of Instagram subscribers and Story views.

Still, at this point you have to ask yourself what exactly is needed. If a simple one-time reach is to be achieved in a few moments, this is where Instagram has clear advantages.

A simple story post can reach 100,000 people within minutes through influencers like Gamerbrother, whereas this is only possible over a certain period of time with Twitch and YouTube. The advantage with Twitch then lies more in the activation of potential customers and in the conversion.

Nevertheless, a marketing campaign in the digital segment should always include a package of all potential platforms in order to actually ensure the maximum reach of the campaign. The combination of extremely quickly generated reach on Instagram coupled with longer-term integration in the video or livestream ensures the best possible attention for your brand/campaign.