Advertise on and grow with Twitch!

First things first. If you’re not an avid gamer or if you don’t have one living under the same roof, you’ve probably never heard of Twitch. Therefore, we’ll briefly explain what Twitch is, why the platform is so popular and what the average Twitch user looks like.

Twitch owes its popularity at large to its strong community. The platform’s chat system allows streamers and viewers to talk and interact with each other, a feature that many traditional media platforms don’t offer. 

It’s because of this feature that Twitch became hugely popular during the lockdown(s) of the pandemic. When people weren’t allowed to leave their homes, they had to look for entertainment and contact online. Twitch was able to offer them exactly that.

After the covid pandemic, the number of Twitch users slightly decreased. Nowadays, however, the platform’s numbers are steadily rising again.

Twitch is a platform that mainly targets gamers and game enthusiasts of all ages.

Twitch’s own statistics however show that the majority of the platform’s users are relatively young, aged between 16 and 34 years old.

The advertising opportunities on Twitch are yours for the taking. But how exactly can you grab those opportunities with both hands?

One way to advertise on Twitch is via display ads. These are shown as native ads that automatically adopt the look and feel of the Twitch platform.

The ads are shown on and during streams, depending on the status of the viewers and the streamers’ preferences. 

• Viewers who are not subscribed to a streamer will always be shown a couple of ads during the stream. These ads are unskippable. The first ad is shown after a few minutes. All following ads are shown periodically.

• Viewers who are subscribed to a streamer will only be shown ads during the stream if the streamer decides to run ads on his/her stream. In this case, the ads are unskippable as well. 

Most streamers chose to run ads on their streams as they make money off the ads themselves.

The cost of Twitch ads depends on the number of impressions, the size of a streamer’s audience and the number of returning viewers.

You can find more information about Twitch’s advertising products on the Twitch website.

Another way to advertise on Twitch is via partnerships with streamers.

This way of advertising is similar to influencer marketing. As a company, you can work together with or sponsor a streamer to promote your product or service. 

An example of a popular advertising partnership on Twitch is that between game developers and streamers. Many game developers often send copies of their new games to streamers. These streamers then get to play or test the games first and in return promote the games to their audience.

How can you find the right partner?

One way to start a good advertisement partnership is by looking for a streamer that matches your brand. This doesn’t necessarily have to be a big-time streamer. Sometimes smaller or lesser-known streamers are a better match. A partnership can be a big opportunity for them, increasing the chances of them wanting to promote your product or service for free. 

Another way you can find an advertising partnership is via Twitch’s so-called ‘bounty board’. Here, companies can offer their ads (‘bounties’) to streamers. Streamers can then select the ads that they want to show. If a streamer runs an ad following the agreement, they successfully complete the bounty and receive their payment.

In other words, the bounty board allows you to introduce your product or service to the streamers. If they like what you have to offer and choose to promote your product or service:

• the category of their stream is automatically adjusted;

• the hashtag #sponsored is automatically added to their stream’s title.

At the moment, the bounty board is mainly used to promote new video games. If you’re not a game developer, advertising via the bounty board is not an interesting option just yet.

Product placement

If you’ve found a streamer that you want to partner up with, you can also contact them directly and ask if they’re interested in product placement for your brand.

Many Twitch streamers  – just like YouTubers – have huge fan bases that look up to them. If fans see their favourite streamers using or promoting a particular product, many will want to have or try that product as well.

Would you like to give advertising on Twitch a try? And do you prefer to advertise via a partnership? Then the Belgian streamer scene is a good place to start looking for the perfect match, as the number of Belgian Twitch streamers and users has grown significantly in the last couple of years. 

One place you can look and try to find a streamer that matches your company and brand, is vlaamsestreamers.be, an online database where you can find many Flemisch streamers.

We said before that Twitch is an underused advertising channel. Despite the platform’s rapid growth in recent years, it still does not show up on many companies’ radars. But we believe that it will in the (near) future. Streaming and Twitch are here to stay. 

Therefore, we believe that Twitch ads are definitely worth a try. Don’t hesitate to reach out to streamers for partnerships or to experiment with ads on the platform yourself. Your efforts might just take your brand to the next level!