How Brands Can Leverage the Power of Twitch

In the world of interactive livestreaming platforms, there is a great need for unique, live, and unpredictable user experiences to enhance enjoyment and engagement. 

Twitch, launched in 2011, fills that need with casual gaming and world-class esports to anime marathons, music, and art streams.  Erin Joyce, Creative Strategy Lead, Americas, for Twitch’s Brand Partnership Studio and Stephanie Quan, Director of Program Management for Twitch’s Brand Partnership Studio are focused on offering advertisers the ability to leverage custom integrations on their platform that tap into native engagement opportunities that are tailored to each brand.

What Are Custom Brand Extensions

Breaking through the clutter, “Twitch offers premium media products, native site integrations, brand partnerships, and sponsorships that stand out in a crowded advertising landscape,” noted Joyce. “Advertisers capture the Twitch audience’s attention with unskippable ads that weave directly into live broadcasts as well as high-impact display units including the homepage carousel,” she added.

The unique aspect of this partnership is the ability of advertisers to be matched with talent. Joyce explained that, “Twitch Ads leverages its Brand Partnership Studio, a team of in-house gaming and livestreaming experts, to help brands activate on Twitch through custom advertising programs often starring Twitch creators as well as sponsorships with both Twitch’s owned and operated premium content and with various media partners that help align brands with livestreaming and gaming.”

Twitch’s Brand Partnership Studio matches clients to creatives who help integrate the brand within the Twitch environment for maximum impact.  “Our team of creatives, strategists and producers are fluent in creator culture and dedicated to helping your brand reach their campaign goals in an authentic way using gaming norms, insights, cultural trends and bold ideas,” she stated.

How Creative Ideation Works

Creative ideation offers a very clear process. “In most cases it starts with a brief and our client’s goals for the campaign,” she began and added, “From there, we work backwards to align the brand, its personae, function, and generally how it relates to Gen-Z or broader culture.  We will build upon your existing brand strategy to craft a narrative that complements your brand and suits the livestreaming space.”

The future, according to Joyce, looks bright for this space. “I personally am fascinated with creator culture and its impact on Gen Z.  As younger audiences continue to invest more time in personality-based content, and find more value in it, I get really excited about the doors this opens for advertisers.  For example, instead of having a creative agency of record, maybe someday a brand will have a dedicated ‘Creator House?’” she posited.

For Quan, the process also offers opportunities to custom fit to the brand. “The standard programming checklists still apply,” she noted, “but with the live environment, we face an extra set of considerations when bringing creative ideas to life on Twitch.” While there are still logistical considerations, she affirmed that, “Our execution centers around the Twitch creator. We depend on the creator to bring the creative idea to life and to connect it with their community’s values. Our team works closely with our network of creators to properly match them with the brands that resonate with them and their communities. Once we have casted our creator, we brief them on the creative concept, talking points and logistics. Because our creators are so accustomed to the intricacies of Twitch, we are able to build our program on a solid foundation!”

An Example of a Successful Campaign on Twitch

When asked about a successful example, both executives mentioned Procter & Gamble. “P&G has had many successful advertising campaigns on Twitch through their various brands,” explained Quan, “most recently they partnered with Twitch for Charmin to create a fun and engaging campaign through the creation of a mini game called the Deuce Destroyer.”

With this brand extension campaign, “Charmin was able to own the stream break by providing an interactive experience through the mini game and rewarding the community through Bits, Twitch’s virtual goods used to cheer on creators during livestreams. Fifteen Twitch streamers participated in the campaign, which exposed the brand and game to a wide assortment of communities across the service. Ultimately, this not only serviced the goals of the brand, but also was well received by the Twitch and media community where it was recognized as the winner of the Gamficiation category for the Shorty Awards,” noted Quan.

Conclusion

For advertisers to be able to truly engage with viewers, there is no better way than through interactive programming where the creatives help to fully integrate messaging. One way to achieve this is through custom branded extensions; live apps that empower creators to enhance their stream with an added layer of interactivity between themselves, their content, their audiences, and the brand at the center of these unique experiences. Twitch is at the core of such efforts and is leading the way to a more satisfying user and brand experience.

 Artwork by Charlene Weisler

This article first appeared in www.MediaVillage.com

 

Lessons From Native Advertising and Branded Content: What Local TV Can Learn

Native and branded content have been around from the early days of radio and television. But now, in the digital age, these forms of messaging are undergoing an evolution that better adapts them to the sensibilities and behaviors of today’s consumers.

The recent Advertising Research Foundation’s (ARF) NativexScience conference revealed lessons from native advertising and branded content, and the value that television brings to the equation.

Native and Branded Are Different Advertising Forms

Although the two terms are sometimes used interchangeably, native and branded content are actually quite different. According to Marc Rappin, chief marketing officer at the ARF, native advertising is a paid experience that looks like content. Because it is essentially assimilated into the design of the publisher, it is considered a more seamless experience for the viewer. It is not necessarily used for distribution purposes.

Branded content, on the other hand, is sponsored by the brand for general distribution purposes. The differences are subtle but important.

More Spending and a Move Into Programmatic

What is similar between the two forms of advertising is that they are becoming a bigger slice of the ad spending pie.....

Read the full article on the Videa blog.

Revenue is a Byproduct of Great Customer Experience. The Wisdom of Viacom’s Bryson Gordon

“My career is weird,” confessed Bryson Gordon, Executive VP Advanced Advertising Group, Viacom. After starting his career “designing an ad blocker,” he is now responsible for expanding Viacom’s arsenal of cross media ad inventory by creating a great customer experience for targeting ads. “But”, he adds, “Business transformation has been a thread throughout.”

Gordon’s first job out of college was for a computer security company, where “we were the first to do software as a service (SAAS) before it was even called software as a service. We fundamentally changed the business model for that industry.” Then at Microsoft, where in a variety of roles, he grew the company’s then tiny direct-to-consumer business into a multi-billion dollar enterprise. “It was a fundamental shift for a gigantic company to reshape how it took its product to market,” he noted. Now at Viacom, he has found his calling. “Here I have the opportunity to work with an amazing set of people and transform the television business. I love that.” 

I sat down with Gordon to find out more about how he will transform television:

Charlene Weisler: Give me a short overview of your department initiatives. 

Bryson Gordon: When we first started Vantage (Viacom’s Data-Driven and Predictive Ad Solution Advertiser Service) it was very much about developing ad capabilities that focused on targeting, measurement, attribution, advanced audience modeling, etc. I ask myself this question: What is going to feel different? Not just some corporate mandate, but when we start to think about the North Star of the organization, what will feel different between our capabilities and where we are going in this new advanced advertising organization. The fundamental pivot is to shift from capabilities to the customer experience of advertising. Customer experience is a loaded term. But when we think about Viacom in creating formats, ad experiences, cross platforms, what are the specific audiences that really drive impact? What can we do as an organization of data scientists, information specialists, researchers, product development people, to fundamentally evolve the customer experience with advertising so that it is incredible for our customers and for our partners? 

Charlene: How will you achieve that?

Bryson: Our team has historically been made up of product managers and data scientists. Now the team spans product management, data science, developers, designers, people who are specialists in the launch of multi-platform environments where content ends up – the social and digital environment. Then we focus on creating not just traditional advertising but also branded marketing content to create the optimal advertising and marketing experiences for our fans in that environment. Then, what can we do to actually orchestrate that in a very thoughtful and methodical way around advanced audience targets that we develop within the organization.

Charlene: How will your work influence or impact OpenAP?

Bryson: OpenAP is foundational to what we are doing within advanced advertising. The focus that Sean Moran, Head of Sales, Viacom, has given us is the opportunity to go across all the different ad formats – from digital to social to linear television to OTT to addressable television – in our portfolio. As we continue to evolve with OpenAP, which launches in the fall, we are taking this notion of consistent advanced audience targeting beyond just the traditional linear television screen into the multi-platform environment. 

Charlene: What are the overall goals that you want to achieve now and over the next three years?

Bryson: I start from the position of the customer. My odd principle that has stuck with me over the years is: Revenue is a byproduct of great customer experience. It is simple but if we use that as a lens through which to assess the set of investments we make in the advanced advertising organization, it gives us tremendous focus. It helps us understand what we need to do to make the ad experience in traditional linear television even better. How do we do that through better targeting and through better formats? We think about the customer journey in Viacom content that cuts across platforms. What can we do, not just to connect, but actually orchestrate that? That is the thing that a year from now, I would like to look back and say that is the fundamental thing I wanted to achieve and I have achieved that.

Charlene: Are you developing attribution models to help you do that?

Bryson: We have been developing attribution models for a couple of years. Interestingly, our ability to drive precise measurement against advanced advertising on television and across multi-channels has facilitated the scaling of adoption of this new currency of TV. An example – a large automotive client who has done a number of campaigns with us, we have that ability to take their target, connect that target back to an addressable set top box, connect that to mobile phone Geo location data, and actually show them not only the physical list of people going to the auto dealership in a specific window after the campaign but also show them which specific dealers have the best local marketing investment on top of the national that was driving the highest lift for their specific region.

Charlene: Can you influence the ad market with your work? 

Bryson: I do because I have already seen that with the reception of Vantage and OpenAP.  We continue to see significant year to year growth in both the number of advertisers who are adopting advanced currencies and the amount of dollars flowing through advanced advertising currencies. 

Charlene: Your team comes from many different areas. How do you get them to strategize together?

Bryson: I deliberately try to not place them together. One of the things we found is that is super interesting is that I have hired a lot of people who don’t know anything about television. I hired a PhD in neuroscience from Toronto whose PhD was about how deep memories get formed in the brain. He doesn’t know the first thing about GRPs or Nielsen demos. What he does know is how you actually influence people and how you drive deep persuade-ability. We have people who bring perspective and expertise to our team that doesn’t look anything like how the TV industry looked like over the past 20 years. It makes for an environment where we can have hackathon style meetings and have people from industry, academia, science, economics, anthropology mixed with people with deep expertise in television. Great things happen. 

Charlene: How are you measuring results for advertisers and campaigns?

Bryson: There is a lot of customization depending on who is behind it and what the campaign is. One of the first conversations we have with an advertiser is: What are the KPIs that are important to you? Do you want to see a higher density of people within the segment? Do you want to see more de-duplicated reach within a segment? Do you want to measure physical lift to a restaurant, auto dealership or a retailer? We give them all of the normal measurements such as impressions delivered against your custom audience, but we also do a lot of custom reporting for clients, depending on what they are trying to achieve. These buys are guaranteed as a currency with in-target delivery. It makes people really comfortable.

This article first appeared in www.MediaVillage.com
 

Native Advertising Now and in the Future. Q&A with Al Chen of Cooperatize

Al Chen, co-founder of Cooperatize is committed to optimizing the reach of Native Advertising through blogs. He has an extensive background in digital, starting at Google, and when he created his company, he decided that he wanted to change the way that advertising is done. The result is Cooperatize.

In this interesting interview, Chen talks about how his firm is able to connect brands to their target audiences via bloggers, how Google+ works, the Google ecosystem including YouTube, the current landscape of branded advertising, global native and how he believes advertising will morph in the future.

There are four videos in this interview:

Subject                                                        Length (in minutes)

Background and Cooperatize                      (5:31)

Preparing for the Future                              (3:56)

Google+                                                       (3:28)

Predictions                                                   (4:44)

Charlene Weisler interviews Cooperatize co-founder Al Chen who talks about his background and company in this 5:31 minute video:

 

CW: Tell me about Cooperatize.

AC: Cooperatize is a marketplace connecting brands with bloggers. The main ad unit we transact is the sponsored blog post or sponsored story. Our technology connects brands at agencies with the bloggers that are in line with their target audience in their target market and we facilitate the process.  We work with over 4000 bloggers in the lifestyle, luxury and travel space.

How does a media company prepare for the future? Al Chen talks to Charlene Weisler about this in this 3:56 minute video:

Al Chen talks to Charlene Weisler about google+, Youtube and privacy issues in this 3:28 minute video:

CW: What is the advantage of Google+?

AC: From a product standpoint, Google+ is just another social network very much like Facebook. The reason why it is important and why people are clamoring for it is that it is like the silver bullet – it ties together your entire online presence. For example, if you are browsing Google and you log into your Google+ profile, Google will learn about your browsing habits and also what your friends on Google+ like to read. Your rankings will change depending on how your browsing habits are with your friends and it might recommend search results that are important for you. In terms of having a website or blog, Google+ is essential because it allows Google to see all the different things you contribute to. So if you are a major contributor to another blog, and it is associated with that Google+ profile, more weight will be placed on other things that you contribute to around the internet because Google knows that you are a well trusted publisher in the space.

Charlene Weisler interviews Al Chen who looks at how the media landscape will change in this 4:44 minute video:

CW: Can you give me some predictions about how the media landscape will look five years from today?

AC: I think that any kind of social platform where users are generating content, there are going to be other platforms that will come up that we will find ways to sponsor them. What I mean by that is, Cooperatize is a sponsored platform for content on blogs. There are also platforms cropping up for sponsored tweets , sponsored Vine videos, sponsored Instagram posts and obviously sponsored posts on Facebook and Twitter. So whenever new platforms come up, I am guaranteeing you that there will be a way to sponsor them. And not just online but also offline. There will be ways to sponsor logos on coffee cups, on urinals, billboards, maybe even on your home thermostat in your living room, the kitchen. It might be seen as a way that brands are invading your home but as technology progresses it will become easier and easier for brands and companies to get into these spaces. 

CW: Al, that sounds like a nightmare scenario to me. At what point do you think consumers will block it out?

AI: I think it will come down to a cultural thing. I don’t think there is a distinct line where people will say that you can’t do this or that it is against their morals. Teens today are more accepting and may see some of the things that we might find annoying as just a part of life living in a world of technology. So I think that as technology changes, the culture is changing as well. My belief is that more and more teens as they grow up are more accepting of these little ways that brands come into their lives.

First published, in abbreviated form, on MediaBizBloggers.com