Tag Archives: ads

Sponsorships

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Sponsorships are great, they are part of a lot of streamers and creators lives. Whether they be a tech company, food or drink products and whatever else. Finding the right sponsorship for you and one that you enjoy or use regularly is insanely challenging at times. Not to mention you have to have some type of community for a company to even begin to be interested in sponsoring you! If you have a few friends and not a whole lot of people behind you than it can be tricky to even get looked at. However if you have a great presence over social medias it may be a bit easier since you will have a much larger reach!

Looking for a sponsorship can be a headache if you aren’t sure what you should be looking for. I think the biggest difficulty that someone can have is finding a) the right company for YOU and b) making sure you have enough reach in order to make this sponsorship successful! I myself have an alright reach on Twitter however it really is hit or miss. I don’t want to go for a sponsorship if I am unsure if I am able to really pull my own weight so to speak with a product. I want to make sure that I can be a good fit for the company and they are able to have new customers through me.

I think this almost goes without saying but I will say it anyways. If you are NOT using a product DO NOT GET A SPONSORSHIP. Nothing is more strange then seeing someone promote a product or company that they are obviously making money with and they are not even using the product. This pop, I love Coca-cola. I would even prefer it over Pepsi. However, for example, Pepsi offers me a sponsorship and for whatever reason I take it. Whether it is good money, free things, etc. But I continue to drink Coca-cola the rival of the company that I am sponsored with (Which most times is in a contract that you NOT do) and then I screw myself over and the company by not really enjoying the product. Not to mention, From a viewer standpoint it looks extremely strange if they see and know I am a Coke fan if all of sudden I am now pushing Pepsi at them. Not to mention if you have said some not so nice things about the opposite company it looks equally suspicious. Within streaming people joke about being a “Sell out”, You know playing games you normally wouldn’t for a buck or what not. This is like the ULTIMATE sell out when you are sponsored by a product that you have trash talked and not liked.

Making money or something out of is always something you want to ask yourself. Is it worth it? We all know if you remotely use twitter and are in the streaming world the particular “Grip” for controllers that seem to sponsor everyone and their dog. What are the people promoting the product REALLY getting out of this? Not a whole lot. I checked out their stats and it couldn’t be much lower. If you are going to get a sponsor and promote their product make sure it is worth your time and energy as well as your reach. For example: We all see Elgato out there with sending their people products. You can tell when they have the #Ad (More on that later) in their tweets or social posts. Whether it be a new larger stream deck or even a new light. Do they get paid by this? Maybe if they have an affiliate link that they are able to direct their viewers to when purchasing the products. But they do receive the free products. Which I am also sure there is a certain amount of posts every so often in a contract that they promote such product!

And finally #Ad. We all have seen this in promotion tweets and if you do happen to get a sponsor or something YOU MUST DO THIS. Besides all the ethical things happening you want to be as transparent ass possible with your community and audience that this is a paid/etc promotion and you are not simply doing this out of the goodness in your own heart. You probably have even seen a few people with paid sponsorships get in trouble with their communities by NOT putting the #Ad in their posts as well too. It is extremely important to be transparent with this to your viewers or it can again, Come off a bit scummy. Not to mention, If you are getting paid to promote something and you are making it look like you are just enjoying the product it can take away from your credibility as an influencer and could even effect your future with companies! Which is never a good thing to have happen.

So as you can see, Having a sponsorship is great! Just make sure you are actually getting something out of it and you aren’t doing it for the “sake of doing it”. Don’t promote something that you have no intention of using yourself. And if at all possible, Before you get a sponsorship especially for food and drink, TRY IT OUT! If the company is not willing to send you samples of this for you to test out before you sign up, chances are they are not confident in their product and you may want to think again before taking this opportunity. It would look pretty silly if GFuel gave sponsorships to people without being willing to send samples along the way right? Look at the people who post the new flavors to try out with their #Ad! This is not only a way for them to get a bit of a perk but a great way to make the general public aware of their latest product! As for me, I will be waiting for a Tim Horton’s or a Candy sponsorship to arrive!

-StaySeeJ08

Twitch, They continuously miss the mark.. Time and time again.

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I think its safe to say that people who know of the streaming community can agree that twitch is dropping the ball in terms of their many misses in recent months. From their emote add ones to running ads in the most absolutely wrong way, here is some specific things as well as suggestions from the community. Just because Twitch is the biggest streaming platform whose rival appears to be YouTube gaming OR Facebook who recently worked to get their Partners free from some DMCA claims, the way Twitch is NOT handling situations is really making them stand out for all the wrong reasons.

First let’s begin with their ever so invasive ads that would essentially force the streamer to either run them on their own or be forced for a picture in picture experience for the viewer. Why is this bad because they happen at the most inopportune times for the streamer, From beating a boss or an epic kill in a battle royale game, it really is not helping the viewer experience in any way, shape, or form.

A particular streamer is also not happy with these ads and rightfully so. Quiltoni is a quilter and educator on the platform. While streaming and running a family friendly PG stream twitch decided (Or whatever the algorithm is) to run a Trojan (Condom) Ad during this time. This is a detrimental part of their stream due to the fact that it can and is broadcast in quilting supply stores as quoted by;
Quiltoni:
“They also may have just killed my relationship with a store that has me live.”
Quiltoni also mentioned that their channel does not have the 18+ (Mature Audience) Filter on either. However by having that type of system in place Twitch can use that to help filter ads that can be damaging to a streamers channel. And I couldn’t agree more. If Twitch is going to force ads on the streamers we should at least have a say in what type of ads are shown on their also. An 18+ channel would be better suited for the beer and condom ads instead of a family friendly stream for other types of things.
( You can find their twitter here for all links: https://twitter.com/quiltoni )

Then there was the emote add-ons by twitch to celebrate the Hispanic Community on the platform which was met with IMMEDIATE backlash due to their extremely stereotypical designs. Now, I myself am a White Female and have never been met with racism before therefore I obviously am not going to speak on that. However I will say this, Why is it that it took a community backlash to prevent/remove these from being released? How many people did this particular change have to go through in order to have them approved? I feel like as a company as large as Twitch or even Amazon that there are some obvious marks about cultural appropriation that have been missed here. Why are people not informed on these particular issues OR better yet, why was the community not all asked on what they think could be a great way to start in terms of adding content to the platform that showcases this.

I also would like to mention that after year and year and year on the platform why has the support system not been updated? The ticket system is flawed at best and there is 0 live support for something that might be needed such as the hate raids that have been popping up in streams more and more frequently. This is where particular streams are targeted with bots or actual people and spamming hate speech where the mods are banning and constantly trying to rectify the situation and making chat safe again. There still are MANY MANY user names that are coming out and “beating the system” so to speak with their way of being written so that they are still allowed in chat. I feel like as a company there should be better ways to make this change happen to prevent so many names from being allowed on the platform. This would go along the lines of why are people who are banned from the channel still able to search and view the channel? (This was mentioned by a tweeter saying that Mixer when it was live actually had a feature that you could not see a channel had you been banned from it). Let along do we need to talk about view bots and how they are still around the platform CONTINUOUSLY!

I think the most frustrating thing from a streamer perspective is that Twitch as a company appears to be a) all about money (as most large company’s do), b) They appear to be more and more about “Smoke and Mirrors” in terms of trying to make it seem like they want the community involved when they really arent involved at all. Case and point would be when they wanted to bring a diverse group together as part of this Safety Counsel however all it was doing was to protect the company by creating policies, Oh and did I forget to mention how one prominent member thought they would go on a bit of a rant about how they were protected from anything and were near “God-Like” due to being on this counsel.

As for streaming asking for things something as seemingly simple as discoverability for the content creators on the platform Twitch doesn’t really do a whole lot their. They took away the “Communities” feature and decided to go with tags which is still again, extremely challenging to find up and coming creators. Why is something that could greatly benefit the streamer community as a whole something on the back burner or not even thought of?

Should we even mention the Sub-tember that focuses on new subscribers and not old ones. I get it, From a marketing perspective you want to bring new viewers in to subscribe for you to make money, And the people who continually sub already will keep doing so, But why not please both? Is that a difficult task to do? Or is it still about money here?

Not to mention, Kudos to Twitch for doing SOMETHING among the sexual abuse accusations that are happening. My only thing is I believe they should be more transparent with what is happening here. They are banning permanently people who have a lot of evidence for them and the crimes that they have committed. They have taken the accusations towards people seriously. I do believe that people are slipping under the radar because they are “bigger” streamers and pulling in viewers. Not to mention their viewers are also harassing the people who have proof and accusing them. The fact they are doing things I will say is progress for sure. Especially for such a delicate issue.

I guess as you can tell there really is some major flaws with Twitch and the direction that they are going. When it comes to listening to the streamers across the platform they really aren’t doing a whole lot to keep them around or offering anything more that other platforms are now. I hope that they do see this and the suggestions and work towards trying to make Twitch a safer place. Also Twitch, Remember, Just because you may be the leading platform in streaming currently, Doesn’t mean that you are going to stay there OR that you can and should slack on what the greater community would like to see.

-StaySeeJ08