Twitch is Using AI to Create Gaming Instant Replays Brands Can Sponsor

The gaming industry is often seen as niche, and difficult for brands to break into. Gemma Battenbough, Twitch’s brand partnership studio lead for EMEA and APAC, believes this isn’t the case. 

“I think it’s an incorrect perception. It goes back to those days of stereotyping of gamers being ‘nerd’ in the basement that aren’t very social. There's a real hangover of that and it doesn’t reflect the reality of today,” she told LBB. 

Gemma described the social aspect of gaming as similar to sports. “There’s not one type of gamer,” she said, using examples of Wordle and e-sports to emphasise the variety.  

According to Gemma, this variety means that all brands can play within the gaming community, not just those brands directly connected to the industry. 

“I think Twitch is a particularly welcoming community to brands, and there are ways to get involved that can surround that content and add value to the conversation and make it fun without having to have a full three-year gaming strategy,” she said. 

Gen Z are “cord cutters” who are incredibly savvy when it comes to sniffing out advertising, Gemma argued. 

“You need to invest in the community. They are a really economically savvy audience so they understand the economics of the creator ecosystem. They know that if a brand is sponsoring a stream that they are actually enabling that creator to do what they love,” she explained. 

Gemma believes that brands need to “have fun with it and be a part of the entertainment.” Rather than disrupting the flow by asking people to “scan a QR code”, for example, taking the audience away from the action, brands need to engage with the game, the streamer, and the audience. 

“We’re using some AI technology that enables brands to do this,” she said. “If there's a really cool moment in the game play, you don’t want to get in the way of that but we can use AI to create an instant replay that can be sponsored by a brand. The audience and the streamer are then not interrupted but rather further entertained.” 

Much like social media advertising, the partnerships between brands and creators need to be authentic. According to Gemma, streamers spend 30-40 hours a week building a community and creating content. Therefore, brands affiliated with those creators will show significant performance outcomes if it’s authentic. 

“We have a team of talent experts. Their job is to match make between creator and brands. They find matches that are more than skin deep. It’s about really engaging with the brand values and the creator,” she said.

Brands investing in grassroots creators rather than “slapping their logo on one of the biggest creators” will generate resonance over time, she said. By sponsoring an up and coming creator and enabling them to continue to be creative, a brand “builds faith within the community.”

Insurance brand AHM created a campaign to promote the brand within the gaming sphere. It partnered with local streamer Panda, who is known for gaming and his philanthropic work in Melbourne. The campaign focused on the concept of healing players during the game. The brand created an animated version of Panda that was used to achieve this in-game experience, while staying true to the values of both the brand and the streamer. 

“It was immersive. It didn’t break the moment or the entertainment value of the stream,” Gemma said of the campaign.

In the context of a fragmented media landscape, ad blockers, and social media algorithms, brave brands should be entering the gaming space to achieve attention and cut-through. 

“Twitch is kinda like a bedroom developer. We are here to help and trial things. The Twitch community is welcoming and actually quite happy with lo fi experimental advertising,” Gemma added. 

“Lean into the ever evolving technology and the creativity and innovation side of things.”