For those of you who aren’t familiar with Twitch, Twitch is an interactive live-streaming service with content that spans a multitude of community interests. The platform first got popular with the gaming community, but it has since expanded to audiences of all kinds including entertainment, sports, music, and more. At the end of 2020, Twitch reported that one trillion minutes of content was watched for the fiscal year. The platform has thirty million average daily visitors and seven million creators making monthly content. Needless to say, there is definitely something for everyone.
So what does this have to do with marketing? Well, unlike today’s society of overly saturated and monetized social and digital channels, Twitch offers an immersive social platform that fosters trusted communities around creators that have authentic relationships with their viewers. Its live format combines the core components that make up today’s entertainment landscape: live-streaming, real-time interactions, and a strong and loyal sense of community. The platform allows for limitless options in verticals of all kinds and provides the perfect way to organically connect your audience to your brand.
The audience is there to connect, forming a true community where the viewers are there to engage with the content or creator of their interest. This is what sets Twitch apart from any other social or digital channel since the connection is personable and authentic instead of just passively scrolling through saturated content.
Twitch Crash Course
Before jumping in, we need to understand how the streaming service 
works and how to play by its communities’ rules and norms. Twitch creators jump on their stream to broadcast to live audiences where viewers can interact with them via Twitch Chat. Viewers come on Twitch because they enjoy watching others who share the same interests and passions as them and are skilled or entertaining at what they do.
With so many creators out there, it can be intimidating to discover the right creators for you and your interests. This is why Twitch offers relevant recommendations based on the viewer’s interests and encourages creators to utilize tags that describe their content in more detail.
Here are a couple of milestones in the Twitch community that can provide some examples for the different types of content that have been done thus far.
U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez used the Twitch community to gain support during the 2020 election. Her first-ever stream with Pokimane (a fellow Twitch creator) and her other creator friends became one of the most viewed streams in Twitch history. Whether she was seeking advice on figuring out how to use her camera during broadcasting or getting tips on how to play the popular mobile game Among Us, her community helped her along and provided the perfect outlet to humanize herself with the general public.
Streamer Lbai Llanos interviewed world-renowned soccer star Lionel Messi after he announced joining the Paris Saint-Germain team earlier this year. The stream collected over 2.6 million views.
The Opportunity For Marketers
Just like any OTT streaming service, ads directly support Twitch’s creators and help keep the platform free to view. Advertisers play a large role in the success of the live-streaming service and allow the ability to continue innovation and investment in their global community.
Here comes the tricky part. To create a successful and meaningful ad on Twitch, brands need to create an experience that resonates with the community. Honing in on interactivity, community values, and tools like commerce and extensions will allow brands to authentically engage with Twitch’s viewers. Twitch is a creative space, so your ads should mirror that as well. Some examples of this include custom creatives, partnerships, sponsored promotions with creators, and even custom branded minigames.
Depending on your brand’s structure and goals, you may even want to take the next step and become a creator yourself. This would allow you the opportunity to expand your audience and authentically connect with your brand’s community. You can even use this channel to gain feedback directly from your consumers and get insight into what they would like to see next from you. It’s the perfect way to personalize your brand while empowering community building.
