Category: Blog

During a time when almost every interaction is virtual, there is one platform that has made incredible strides to become the ideal media streaming service. Twitch has gradually begun making its climb to becoming one of the most used apps over the past couple of years. Many would assume that Twitch is just another “nerdy” video game streaming platform like Youtube and to some extent that is correct. Yet, the widely popular streaming platform offers a diverse selection of content that is no longer centered around just gaming…

Twitch Isn’t Just for Gamers: The Platform’s Everyday Evolution

This new generation of Twitch streamers has created an environment that is so unique that many users tune it to watch just about anything. From watching beat battle competitions put on by hit-making producer Kenny Beats to impactful politicians like AOC playing Among Us, Twitch has become a generator for new and engaging content. Twitch is recognized as a game-streaming platform, but as of late personal categories such as “Just Chatting” and “Music” are making their way to the forefront of Twitch’s top trending categories. According to Sullygnome.com, a statistics and analytics service for Twitch, the category “Just Chatting” has had over 2 billion hours watched in the past year. With lockdowns and restrictions to continue throughout the country, the future of in-person events seems to still be up in the air. In an article written by Mariel Soto Reyes for Business Insider, they state, “Twitch may be able to lure more brands to its platform with its rapidly expanding non-gaming content. Non-gaming content was already rising in popularity on Twitch before the pandemic, but the combination of stay-at-home orders and the cancellation of live events has seriously accelerated the trend.” These distinct non-gaming categories are opening the door for people such as DJs, media personalities, and artists to create their own streaming channels to create their own personalized experiences for their audience.

Athletes, Creators and the Quarantine Pivot to Community Streaming

Yet, one of the more interesting trends that are currently rising throughout the platform is the increase of professional athletes starting their own Twitch Channels. As the pandemic took the entire world completely by surprise, many athletes were forced to quarantine in their homes while professional leagues tried to navigate this global issue one day at a time. Now, professional athletes are not so much different from regular working people. They wake up, get dressed, go to work, maybe workout and go back home like every other individual. However, when a global issue such as a pandemic eliminates the option to physically go to work and exercise. The next question that follows is usually, “Now what do I do?” With the future of in-person sporting events still in the air, many athletes turned to video games to distract themselves from the real world. Athletes such as Devin Booker, Juju Smith-Schuster, Josh Hart, and many more turned to live streaming on Twitch to interact with their fans while also keeping themselves occupied.

While in-person sports were put on hold back during the beginning of 2020. Leagues around the country took advantage of the esports platform and began setting up virtual tournaments of their own sports. From the NBA 2K sports tournament hosted on ESPN to EA’s Madden NFL Tournament being put on to help support Covid-19 relief efforts. Twitch and the world of Esports saw a huge growth in supporters when the pandemic started. In our current state revolving around this “new normal”, almost every sports league has figured out a way to adapt to COVID-19 protocols and regulations. Yet, Twitch and the interest surrounding the world of Esports continues to escalate around the world.

From Esports to Entertainment: Why Twitch’s Non-Gaming Content Is Booming

Starting the new year in 2021, according to Twitchtracker.com the platform is already averaging around 1.5 million more users than they were this time last year. With over 17 Billion hours streamed last year… yeah that’s right, billion with a B. The media streaming service has solidified itself as the primary gaming-media platform for years to come. This not only opens the door for young hopefuls who hope to break into the gaming industry but for athletes who are trying to increase their exposure beyond their normal audience. For example, all-star small forward Gordon Hayward has made himself a name in the Twitch realm. Gordon is a player for the Charlotte Hornets. Yet, when he hops on stream and plays League of Legends (a team-based strategy game) or Valorant he goes by the name Gtimeee or GTiiME. He currently has 82.4k followers on the platform and has expanded his fan base beyond the casual NBA basketball fan. The same can be said for All-NBA team recipient Ben Simmons and NCAA Champion Josh Hart who have made themselves known figures in the Call of Duty Community.

As mentioned previously, Ben Simmons and Josh Hart have become much more than the average Call of Duty streamers on Twitch. Ben who goes by the user name SimmoTheSavage25 currently has 51.7k followers while Josh has gained a little more popularity with 76.5k followers. The two have increased their follower count by collaborating with popular streamers on the app. Josh has collaborated with notable warzone content creators such as Crowder (The Atlanta Faze Coach) and JoshOG (Popular Twitch Streamer). Crowder has around 235k followers while JoshOG has over 1.7 million followers. However, Ben Simmons has worked with perhaps the greatest Esports athlete of all time, Tyler Blevins or better known as Ninja. The gaming phenom Ninja has made himself a name not only on Twitch but in the world of top tier athletes. He currently holds the top spot of being the most followed streamer on the platform with 16.6 million followers. These collaborations are important because it allows for this intersection of both socially recognized sports combined with this new foreign world of streamers and esports. It offers an exciting new perspective from two completely different worlds while at the same time creates appealing fresh content for the viewers who tune in to watch.

Anyone Can Build a Niche on Twitch

We no longer live in an era where becoming a vlogger or gaming for a living is frowned upon in society. Nowadays, kids all across the country are wanting to grow up and become a professional Esports player or a content creator. With the technology and resources that streaming services like Twitch provide it is more than possible for these kids to reach their goals. With that being said, the presence of big-name figures such as Snoop Dogg, Brendon Urie, Steve Aoki, and many more are only encouraging more users to hop on and stream their hobbies.

Twitch’s model as a streaming platform is constantly advancing its technology and is improving its usage every single day. Currently, with over 9 million channels the future of Twitch is more than bright with much more room to grow as an app. Now, more than ever is the perfect time for users to create a twitch channel so that they can expand their audience and create a new sense of community. It’s not Twitter, It’s not Instagram, and it sure isn’t Facebook. Instead, Twitch is in a world of its own and it’s positioned to dominate as one of the biggest streaming platforms of all time.

Sources

1. https://b2bbite.substack.com/p/is-twitch-the-next-big-b2b-thing
2. https://www.businessinsider.com/twitch-non-gaming-content-grows-in-popularity-2020-5
3. https://sullygnome.com/game/Just_Chatting/365
4. https://www.pcmag.com/picks/best-iphone-apps
5. https://www.businessofbusiness.com/articles/pro-athletes-are-now-some-of-the-most-popular-game-streamers-as-leagues-remain-closed/
6. https://twitchtracker.com/statistics
7. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fuEnVZZe2w&t=589s
8. https://www.twitch.tv/gdhayward/about
9. https://www.twitch.tv/simmothesavage25
10. https://www.twitch.tv/jhartshow
11. https://www.twitch.tv/joshog
12. https://www.twitch.tv/crowder
13. https://www.twitch.tv/ninja

Athletes are increasingly monetizing their social media channels. Portuguese football star Cristiano Ronaldo, who currently has the most Instagram followers at 254 million, can make $1.5 million per Instagram post (GQ, 2019). While most athletes cannot compete with Ronaldo’s digital following, the ability to incorporate this lucrative supplemental revenue stream in addition to league contracts is not uncommon. However, despite the abundance of sponsored posts and partnership related income, athletes have largely failed to consistently disclose their financial relationships with the brands they are paid to promote. Thus, fans are led to believe that their favorite athletes are not commercially tied to these brands and are instead posting about them because they genuinely like the products and services that they offer. In many countries in the world, some laws prevent consumers from being taken advantage of in such a manner, however, few pieces of legislation directly address social media advertising. This allows athletes and their marketing teams to disregard the general consumer protection laws. The described relationship between brands, influencers, and consumers is known as surreptitious advertising.

Surreptitious advertising seeks to change a consumer’s perception of a particular brand. As social media activity continues to boom across several different platforms worldwide, brands are increasing their advertising budgets to take advantage of these mediums. The amount of money circulating through the digital ecosystem has made being a social media influencer a viable profession. Anuja Arora, a professor at the Jaypee Institute of Information Technology, describes social media influencers as “an individual who has established credibility within a specific field” (Arora, 2019). Consumers will listen and react according to what influencers have to say because they trust that influencers genuinely know what they are talking about. To maximize the returns of an advertising campaign, many brands are now partnering with social media influencers to help promote their products. However, by not disclosing partnership deals within sponsored posts, social media influencers are pretending to be consumers when they are in fact paid carriers for advertisements. Such an act breaks the trust that consumers have with influences and is why countries around the world are beginning to pass legislation to inhibit this exploitation.

Why do brands and influencers use surreptitious advertising?

The transition from traditional advertising platforms to social media outlets is the result of a shift in consumer brand perception. Consumers are now more likely to trust the opinions of other consumers than the information that companies feed to them about their products. In response to this shift, companies targeted social media influencers to become advertising middlemen. Influencers are uniquely capable of inciting the benefits of word of mouth advertising without disclosing their financial associations with brands. It is only when a consumer is already knowledgeable on either advertising techniques or on the product itself that they can pick up on surreptitious advertising. These phenomena are known as persuasion knowledge and resistance. Persuasion knowledge is a consumer’s ability to recognize an advertisement as an advertisement while resistance is a negative response generated from this recognition. Consumers are likely to increase their persuasion knowledge when a brand visibly discloses their advertisement. Furthermore, should a consumer recognize an advertisement that was not disclosed by a brand, their resistance to the advertisement would grow as well.

Surreptitious advertising exists to circumvent a consumer’s resistance to traditional forms of advertising. While an advertisement may at first seem like a genuine display of product affinity by an influencer, it is generally a fabrication aiming to maintain or enhance consumer engagement while generating revenue for the influencer and moving sales for a brand. Essentially, surreptitious advertising seeks to remove resistance from the equation entirely. Surreptitious advertising can prevent consumers from reacting negatively to an ad as it is only when the consumer gains knowledge of the persuasion that they can resist it. The intensity of resistance increases when consumers discover an undisclosed advertisement. But resistance is also present even when an advertisement is properly communicated. This zero-sum game is why brands utilize surreptitious advertising as it provides them with the best opportunity to preserve a positive brand attitude and get value out of their investment in influencers.

The implications of surreptitious advertising and how to become compliant with surreptitious advertising laws

Athletes and brands that currently have financial agreements must become compliant in the near future to avoid any potential lawsuits. Most countries lack social media-specific advertising laws but because social media is a relatively new platform for advertising, legislation on this medium should be expected to grow with time. Thus, as social media ages, it will become imperative that athletes and brands rework their marketing strategies to be compliant with emerging surreptitious advertising laws. The high rate of surreptitious advertising suggests that branding on social media will require a major overhaul in the future. Athletes, regardless of their following, must become proactive by learning to post branded content that is compliant before they are faced with legal consequences.

There are three ways that social media influences can be compliant with typical surreptitious advertising legislation. The first is to describe the nature of the partnership within the caption of the post. If done correctly, this can even improve the reaction that consumers have to an advertisement.

The next way to become compliant is to use the “paid promotion” feature that Instagram has. Instagram is the platform where surreptitious advertising takes place at the highest rate due to the visually focused content that the networking service lends itself to. The “paid promotion” function adds an additional layer of transparency to branded social media posts that do not distract from the content of the post.

Lastly, influencers can insert a “#ad” tag within the caption of a post. For posts with longer captions, it is best to have the tag before the description so that viewers do not have to click on “More…” to see that the post is indeed an advertisement. Any of these three methods will make a post compliant with surreptitious advertising law. These best practices may only take a few seconds, but the implications of the influencer-brand-consumer relationship can be significant.

Sources

1. Arora, A. (2019). Measuring social media influencer index-insights from Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 49, 86–101, DOI: 10.1016/j.jretconser.2019.03.012
2. N.a. (2019). This is how much the world’s richest athletes are earning per Instagram post in 2019. GQ. Retrieved from: https://www.gq.com.au/fitness/sport/this-is-how-much-the-worlds-richest-athletes-are-earning-per-instagram-post-in-2019/image-gallery/7f4641f98de21b5d2e13e48e6929b196#:~:text=Taking%20out%20the%20top%20spot,%241.4%20million%20per%20Instagram%20post.