Page 33 - AdNews May-June 2020

PAX Australia 2019
The agency currently has a global audience of 750 million unique viewers per month across its channels, predominantly across YouTube and Twitch, with Australian audiences making up about 10% of that.
“The space has developed so rapidly,” says co-founder and director at Click, Grace Watkins.
“I would say when we started three years ago, we had six influencers on our books. And our roster made up about 20 million views per month combined, and it’s just exploded over the last three years.
“We now represent about 18 channels and it’s grown to about 750 million views per month.
“What’s allowed for that is that we’re really playing in a market that isn’t limited by geographical boundaries. So our audience is really untapped when it comes to the fact that it’s worldwide. The games indus- try is growing so rapidly in terms of revenue, now it’s bigger than the music and movie industries combined, and the fact that it’s a low barrier to entry just means that there’s so much potential for rapid growth.”
Watkins says there’s been a “massive” increase in spend from brands over the past year, as well as the emergence of non-endemic brands in the space.
“What’s most exciting now is we traditionally saw a lot of endemic brands getting into the space, so game developers, gaming hardware companies, that sort of thing,” she says.
“Whereas now, more and more we’re saying non-endemic brands get into the space. So over the past year, Adidas, H&M, and fast-food brands KFC and Chipotle in the US.”
Over the period she’s spent working with brands, Watkins has noticed that they have developed how they advertise in the space after noting that connecting with young people is tricky.
“More and more these days, young people are pretty attuned to what tradi- tional advertising looks like and kind of have a high bullshit radar,” she says.
“With that more people are looking at influencers, looking at online creators and forming a relationship with them. Combined with the fact that a lot of young people use ad blockers online, working directly with creators is an amazing way to reach an otherwise quite difficult to reach audience, which is for us mostly teenage and early 20 males.
“All of these companies are recognising that gamers can’t just be put in that gaming box. They’re really huge influencers and have an incred- ible connection with their audiences, so when they recommend
something, the audience really responds to that well.”
But Watkins says the space is still in growth mode, with more education around how to effec- tively advertise in it still needed across the industry.
“More and more people are aware of gaming as a major enter- tainment genre that carries with it huge audiences and huge reve- nues,” she says.
“But I would say that under- standing how to penetrate that in an effective way isn’t 100% there yet.
“I think it’s absolutely trend- ing there and it’s getting in the right direction.”
Chanana at Twitch also would like to see influencer marking be taken a step further by brands.
“Young people are savvier than ever before,” he says.
“They want to play a role in cre- ating an entertainment moment. When you invest in Twitch, you invest in an audience that partici- pates and engages.
“All engagement on Twitch comes with various layers of intent when viewers consume brand mes- saging delivered by personalities they share a special real-time con- nection with alongside other fans. Leaning into this audience and their behaviours is how you max- imise value for brands.”