While what Twitch does with ads may not instantly be interesting to a streamer, anyone who wants to make this career should be paying attention! Twitch’s advertising pitch deck offers a lot of insight into the platform and the audiences that are growing here. With the massive growth that Twitch has experienced this year, their advertising department is working to bring in brand dollars. For non-endemic brands, this can often be a tough sell – but this pitch deck is clearly aimed at changing that. Rather than focusing on gaming, Twitch appears to be highlighting the value of the audience rather than the content. It’s a good strategy, and should actually drive significant interest from apprehensive advertisers.
AdAge spoke with a couple of brands about this exact topic, and the enthusiasm from marketers is growing. That’s exactly why streamers need to pay attention! If you know how Twitch, at a high level, is pitching the multinational brands, then you can be better prepared when those brands’ PR people hit your email!
New Audience Data from Twitch
Twitch-MarketingAbove, you’ll find all 37-pages of the pitch deck that Twitch is sending to brands. While much of it is presentation fodder, there are some particularly important details I’ll point out starting with Young & Engaged. Immersive. Community. Live. Those are the four elements of ‘magic’ that make Twitch unique according to the pitch deck. As a streamer, those are the kind of things you need to think about for your stream. How are you engaging and immersing your viewers? Are you building a community around your live content?
It’s rare that we are treated to facts from Twitch themselves, so let me highlight them here:
- 14% of Twitch’s audience is 13-17 years old.
- 56% of Twitch’s audience is 18-34 years old.
- 30% of Twitch’s audience is over the age of 35.
Twitch’s audiences can also be defined largely as:
- Savvy with Technology (Confident using new technology, and buy new tech).
- Focused on Community (Buy products to support their community)
- Interested in Music, Gaming, Technology, Food and Drink, Television, Cooking, Eating Out and Films.
What this Twitch Pitch Deck is Selling
At the end of the pitch deck is where they show brands how they can get their ads on the platform. They put their most ‘desirable’ offering first – First Video Impression Takeover. On Twitch, we call that a Pre-Roll. It’s the type of ad they want brands to buy the most of – which is why they lead with it.
But, concerningly, the second type of ad they are selling is something called Premium Video. At first, I was confused as to what it was… but then realized it APPEARS to be a rebranding of SureStream ads. For anyone unfamiliar with SureStream Ads, they have been tested since 2016, as a kind of Adblock Resistant video ads. Instead of being overlaid on the content as most ads across the internet currently are, SureStream appears within the feed and thus impossible to skip. I don’t know if we’ll see them widely deployed – or if they have changed over the years… but still concerning if things get to that point!
After the video ads, Twitch then describes their static “Display” media – similar to standard banner ads you might see anywhere online. Homepage Headliner is a unique offering to the carousel on the front page. Medium Rectangle and Super Leaderboard ads are very common as well.
It’s great to see Twitch actively out there promoting the platform, and hopefully in the process educating brands. The last thing that anyone wants to see is an influx of Burger King style marketers.
