The past year has brought both challenges and opportunities for Twitch. The Amazon-owned livestreaming platform reaped the benefits of the overall rise in streamed content consumption spurred by the COVID-19 pandemic, with Twitch viewership increasing by 45 percent in 2021. It remains the dominant livestreaming platform, accounting for 71 percent of total hours watched across Twitch, YouTube and Facebook Gaming in the past year.

But as Twitch’s audience continues to grow, the platform has struggled to keep some of its high-profile creators as engaged and active as they once were. Female creators and streamers of color have had to deal with increased harassment in recent months, though Twitch has responded by creating new tools and policies to boost safety and privacy on the platform.

The initiatives outlined during Monday’s presentation represent Twitch’s most recent effort to keep streamers in front of their cameras and working. “We’re working directly with them to build out new content formats and verticals that really reflect their interests and their passions, as well as the interests and passions of their community,” said Twitch vp of global creators Constance Knight.

Iooss’ talk at the NewFronts covered two new features for Twitch creators. The first was “For Twitch, With Twitch,” a slate of creator-driven content curated specifically for advertisers. The selection includes independent and creator-led passion projects such as a travel show hosted by chess-playing streamer sisters Alexandra and Andrea Botez, in addition to pre-existing Twitch intellectual properties such as Twitch Rivals.

“When ‘The Queen’s Gambit’ was on, there was this sort of lightning-rod moment for chess, and you could see that reflected on Twitch, which was super cool,” said Iooss, who serves as Twitch’s head of sales in the Americas, in an interview with Digiday. “I think examples like that help marketers really understand how much we’re driving culture.” Other “For Twitch, With Twitch” shows will hinge on the touchpoints between Twitch and other areas of popular culture, including shopping and college sports.

The second major announcement was “Co-Op Drops,” a program allowing brands to get involved in Drops, a pre-existing feature wherein viewers could gain in-game rewards for watching livestreams. Twitch did a test-run of the program in March, collaborating with Adobe to put on a series of sponsored streams inside Amazon’s popular MMORPG, “New World.”

For this first round of Co-Op Drops, Amazon art director Charles Bradbury sat down with prominent Twitch streamer Shroud, to design a brand-new armor set and weapon for the game, taking viewers’ input into consideration; the new items then became available for players to claim as a Drop. “Because it’s an Amazon game, it creates a great synergy, especially …read more

Source:: Digiday

Author: Aaron