An Affiliates Guide To Using Twitch As A Traffic Source

If you didn’t already know, Twitch is the world’s leading video platform and community for gamers. On average, over 45 million users visit the site every month to view live video streams and to interact with fellow viewers.

Since it was launched in 2011, Twitch has already surpassed other mainstream social websites including Facebook for user engagement. In fact, the number of broadcasters tripled in 2013 alone. This opens the door to unique advertising formats and strategies.

One reason Twitch is a great platform for advertisers is because the platform boasts some of the most skilled gamers on the planet, many of whom draw a huge interactive audience. This means that by either buying ad space or interacting with these gamers allows for huge opportunity to get lots of conversions.

Make no mistake, this is massive opportunity for those in the gaming market to connect with a huge, engaged and targeted audience.

So how can you use twitch as a traffic source?

 
Twitch has a fully featured advertising network that lets advertisers choose how they want to display their ads.

From video ads available on both desktop and mobile platforms to static ads that let you take up the entire homepage or even just a simple banner ad.

Twitch allows you to display your ads to 60 million unique viewers spread out between the 9000+ members of their partner program.

However, the thing with Twitch is the demographic of its users. Most are male between the ages of 18-49, obviously a huge demographic for a lot of advertising, but this is a very targeted audience and as such Twitch commands a higher average advertising cost per thousand views.

The average price hovers around the $16 mark, way above the average price on other sites which is around the $9 mark.

So is it worth it? Well that depends, if you are advertising a relevant product to this targeted audience then you could very well find that the your ROI is much higher than you would expect to see on other, less targeted platforms.

Don’t want to buy ads?

 
If you don’t want to buy ads, then there is still plenty of opportunity to promote your products using the Twitch platform.

The main strategy here is about building relationships and partnerships directly with broadcasters who have large audiences.

This is no doubt a much more difficult strategy to take and depends on having both a good relationship with the broadcaster and their audience. The last any broadcaster wants is to be perceived as a ‘spammer’ which is an easy way to lose any credibility with a ferociously loyal, yet extremely tech-savvy audience. People can tell when someone is trying to make a ‘quick buck’ and can be instantly turned off by things like this. It’s definitely an option, but be aware of your audience and make sure you get it right to see the best results.

There are many examples of broadcasters on Twitch that welcome sponsorship from marketers. One such example is a guy by the name of Shawn Collins (of Affiliate Summit fame). Shawn charges around $250 to wear a shirt from his sponsors.

Other options include adding logos to broadcaster’s streams and adding adverts to their personal websites. The options are endless, so it’s down to your creativity how you can utilise building these potentially lucrative relationships.

As you can see there is a huge, growing opportunity to bring in a huge amount of affiliate income using Twitch. This platform is definitely still in it’s infancy and you might struggle to find resources to help you build your network on this platform. But hey, being an early adopter is definitely a good thing and if you can make it work for you then we’re all for it!

We can definitely see Twitch growing in popularity amongst affiliates as the years progress and this might just be something to keep on your radar for now. With the recent acquisition of Twitch by Amazon, we might see the ad network become a little more intuitive and educational resources become more widespread.

If you would like any further information about the Twitch advertising network you can visit their website here:

twitchadvertising.tv/