How brands are taking advantage of Twitch’s streaming platform

Close to two-thirds of Australians play video games according to the Interactive Games and Entertainment Association and 2.5 million people globally watch Twitch at any time, which Gemma Battenbough, head of brand partnership studio APAC at Twitch said makes gamers an optimal target audience for brands.

Battenbough spoke to Digital Nation about how brands can use the streaming platform to reach gamers in creative and bespoke ways. 

She said gamers are typically harder to reach, “We find that brands want to come to Twitch to reach that demographic that they can't find it elsewhere and also take advantage of the creative ways that you can work with that audience.

“Twitch is highly interactive, it's community driven. You can get creative with how you engage with an audience and bring your brand to life in that environment.”

The breadth of categories of advertisers and brands who want to work creatively on Twitch has grown, Battenbough said.

“We've done everything from food and beverage to apparel and beauty. But even government has some interesting work there with how you engage with a young male audience around drunk driving using Twitch as a vehicle to do that. The breadth of brands and marketers wanting to engage, it's diverse,” she said.

The beauty of Twitch is that brands can approach their campaigns in different ways.  

Battenbough explained, “As the brand partnership studio, we focus on the creative side of things. That can be everything from branded live streams, where we work creatively with a content creator to come up with a narrative that works for their community, usually focused on that interactivity.

“Shaping the narrative in a way that the audience gets to get involved, have a say and, somewhat co-create the content, all the way up to events and to live premiere. One [premiere] we did with Black Adam and Warner Brothers recently, where we went to the red carpet, turned it purple and livestream the whole premiere.”

At Twitch, Battenbough said they are certainly expecting a lot more customer activations.

She said, “We can do bespoke things for brands, whether that is building in-game or whether coming back to in real life and activating from their events.

“I expect a lot more creativity in this space. As brands get braver, they start to see the results and they double down on the interactivity and the benefits that Twitch and gaming can bring.”