Twitch streams can be goldmines for brands. From product placement to logos to sponsored content, ads on Twitch are common and, because they’re part of the video feed, they are immune to ad blockers. Recently, computer vision media company GumGum Sports and FanAI, an AI-based analytics company, partnered to help esports organizations tap into the advertising value of their Twitch streams.
GumGum Sports helps brands measure the value of an ad placement in traditional and online broadcasts through the social media exposure—likes, shares, comments, etc.—the brand placement receives. The company has worked with many major sports and recently has helped leading esports organizations like Cloud 9, Optic Gaming, and Team SoloMid (TSM) to quantify the value of brand placement on Twitch streams.
“GumGum can measure the value of having a t-shirt on stream for three hours and combine that with the value of the ad overlay and the social engagement,” said Brad Sive, the Chief Revenue Officer of TSM. “It’s a 360° understanding of the brand placement.”
While GumGum Sports measures the reach and value of a logo, FanAI can work out who saw the logo. It provides a similar service to what the Nielsen Ratings do for traditional television broadcasts. The esports audience is often assumed to be a narrow demographic, but, according to FanAI CEO Johannes Waldstein, it is much broader.
“[The esports audience] is not homogenous. Most brands and agencies think that [it] is all teenage men or youths and suddenly they go into an Overwatch or Fortnite [tournament] and see a much larger proportion of women,” Waldstein explained. “In some ways [the esports audience] is like the audience for movies, everyone is in the movie audience, there are just different segments that identify with different people. Brands and agencies think about esports as just action comedy or one type of genre. Esports aren’t just first-person shooters. As you dig into the audience, like in movies, you get many different personality types, backgrounds and experiences.”
Esports are unique in comparison to sports. In traditional pro sports, with some notable exceptions such as Barcelona and Real Madrid, teams have one set of players who compete in one sport. TSM has players that compete competitively in eight different games. Brands that connect well with the Fortnite audience may not connect as well with a League of Legends or Super Smash Bros audience.
“For companies getting into the esports ecosystem, GumGum helps them wrap their head around the metrics and what the value proposition is,” Sive said. “With TSM, it’s a complex sponsorship … so we need a platform that is digitally based and able to keep up with the sponsorships that we have on multiple different platforms and pillars.”
The main value of Twitch streams to brands, however, may be their ability to sidestep ad blockers. (Ad blocking programs remove or alter the ads that would otherwise show up online, and are a major issue for every online brand or publication.) Many esports fans use ad blockers by default, so having ads that are part of the content and thus unblockable is inherently valuable.
“Twitch is able to have branded content and overlays and experiences that you can’t ad block,” said Waldstein. “[The ads are] part of the Twitch platform so having the sponsors logos inside [the streams themselves] make them unblockable.”
Despite the ubiquity of ad blocker usage within the audience, Jeff Katz, GumGum Sports’ GM of Sports Sponsorships doesn’t think ads are ineffective in esports.
“It’s really hard to go through official channels in order to reach this audience,” said Katz. “But, if you are able to reach them, they are potentially even more responsive because they aren’t being bombarded with advertisements as much as other audiences because of ad blockers.”
The most valuable ads on Twitch aren’t the commercials that play when a stream is opened. They are the constant logos around the frame of the stream and the products used by streamers on air. Tyler “Ninja” Blevins’ love of RedBull has placed the brand in front of millions of his fans in an authentic way.
TSM has major brands aligned with the organization and Sive said the key has been developing creative content around those partnerships. “You have to create content that is organic, integrated and makes sense inside your ecosystem,” Sive explained.
One of the most successful TSM ad campaigns was a partnership with Dr. Pepper called “Team SodaMid.” The ad was Power Ranger-themed and featured TSM’s League of Legends team. Team SodaMid became a meme on Twitch chat, was reposted constantly on Twitter and Reddit and generally went over well with esports fans.
“[Team SodaMid] spread through our network of competitive players, influencers and streamers and connected with their massive audiences,” Sive said. “GumGum helped us measure the value of the ad’s reach on social media. Before you might just throw a tweet out into the universe and not understand it’s value.”