Month: December 2022

The campaign is structured much like the many other performance marketing programs StreamElements has administered since its founding in 2016: Participating streamers receive branded overlays and graphics, as well as a unique product link that they can share with their communities. Every click counts toward the streamer’s performance goals, and StreamElements only get paid when an actual purchase is made.

“What we’re doing is really mitigating risk for brands,” Hussaini said. “They don’t have to guess how many people are going to purchase based on ads, they don’t have to pay for ads up front and then hope for the best in the back end.” So far, more than 10,000 creators have participated in HelloFresh sponsorships via StreamElements, according to StreamElements head of brand partnerships Saad Hussaini.

StreamElements’ plug-and-play interface creates a lighter lift for brands looking to reach the gaming community, eschewing the protracted negotiations and production time that can come along with brand partnerships with prominent individual streamers. 

“Instead of having to search for the perfect agency with the perfect talent for one specific integration, StreamElements has such a huge amount of streamer data that they can potentially automate that resource-intensive vetting process for brands,” said Gappy, a Twitch streamer who requested anonymity to avoid jeopardizing potential brand partnerships. “Some of the deals they give to creators are already automated from our end, start-to-finish, from contracts to campaign briefs to even tracking deliverables.”

For years, StreamElements has been practically ubiquitous in the livestreaming space. Over 200,000 Twitch and YouTube channels use the free platform, and the company has benefited from recent controversies involving competitors such as Streamlabs. It’s only relatively recently that non-endemic brands have started to more fully realize the potential marketing value of the “long tail” of small-to-mid-sized streamers served by StreamElements.

“I’d say that is true of many tools and services streamers use,” said Mitsu, another streamer who requested anonymity. “Only recently are companies outside of the gaming space starting to learn the value and power of Discord for community building and news dissemination, for example.”

This weekend, StreamElements hopes to step further into the light. Its campaign with HelloFresh was nominated for a Streamy Award, the prominent YouTube-owned award ceremony for the online video industry.

“If you look at the other nominees in our category, we are the only actual true brand, and the others are creators that created brands,” McConnell said. “I think it really showcases that HelloFresh has a strong presence in the YouTube community.”

Hussaini and McConnell will both be in attendance at the Streamy Awards ceremony in Los Angeles Dec. 4. Whether they win, Hussaini believes the nomination is an opportunity to showcase his platform to brands and marketers outside the livestreaming space.

“We are very dominant when it comes to livestreaming sponsorships, but we’re not that well-known in the business side of the world,” he said. “And that’s where the Streamy Awards and everything comes in.”

Subject material ranged from food consumed at Super Bowl watch parties to instructions for hair extensions — and showed a potential correlation to consumers’ shopping habits across other sites.

These data points might guide marketers on alternative spending options for their budgets that go beyond their business. For example, Food Network’s audience on social media was nine times more likely to visit websites of insurance brands like State Farm and Geico, according to Tubular. Tubular’s recent analysis also showed people who watched beauty videos were 5.84 times more likely to buy Nintendo DS games on Amazon compared to the average viewer.

“With the fast growth of video content across top social platforms, digging into how video behavior relates to shopping affinity gives advertisers what they need to justify social platform ROI in the face of what could be an uncertain 2023,” said Chrissy Werner, vp of marketing at Tubular Labs.

In its latest report on navigating the social video landscape, Tubular covered its predictions on the future of search and marketing and the creator economy in the upcoming year. It also addressed the rise of augmented reality in virtual reality platforms, such as the metaverse or other immersive environments.

Next year, Tubular predicts that creators are poised to become bigger economic drivers. In the past year, influencer content was watched 13.2 times more than media and brand content combined, according to its research. Tubular also expects the influencer market to keep expanding, with 2023 projected influencer viewership hitting some 10 trillion views per month across all platforms. In January 2022, this was around 5 trillion views per month.

Creator marketing — which has been a trend this year — is causing many agencies to rethink their strategies on using content creators and social media influencers. Major holding agencies are also looking to creators when developing a commerce strategy.

“Shoppable livestreams or video content, paired with a credible influencer and raving comments from a community of viewers is an instant recipe for a believable, trusted sponsored social post,” said Amy Lanzi, coo of Publicis Commerce. “With this blueprint, we have built out … creator-led commerce solutions with partners like TikTok and Spotify that offer more personalization and closed loop measurement.”

Tubular also predicted that augmented reality will come into greater focus as marketers experiment with virtual worlds and platforms, an area in which Snap has hung its hat. The social media company is developing its own AR glasses called Spectacles to connect with virtual reality content.

In the past year, 15 billion videos were uploaded across platforms mentioning AR or VR, according to Tubular. This was 38% higher than the previous year, suggesting that social audiences are getting more engaged in the topic. And as some of the technologies, such as 5G and robotics, become more integrated, companies can expect “faster and more nimble solutions” while consumers see improved experiences, said Ian Liddicoat, CTO of AI advertising company Adludio.

The popularity of videos is showing that social is becoming the new place for search — just ask TikTok. When people are looking for answers, they tend to seek out videos more rather than text, which marketers should keep in mind when identifying new audiences, Tubular data suggested. Based on Tubular analysis of popular keyword searches, for instance, those searching for recipes were 204 times more likely to look for Green Giant products on Amazon. Those consuming sports videos were more likely to gravitate toward brands like OREI and Riot Games.

“As the creator economy’s importance continues to grow, brands and agencies need to go beyond just listening to where audiences exist, but also how content influences consumer purchasing decisions,” Werner said.

Last year’s fake movie trailer with Hart had Sam’s Club members commenting that they assumed the brand was teasing a new Christmas film, said Sam Club’s chief membership and marketing officer Ciara Gary, which motivated repeating the stunt this year.

“We kept coming back to ‘what if we made a Christmas movie’,” said Gary. “We thought it would be fun to tell the story of Sam’s Club by deploying the movie trailer format as a form of misdirect and this format allowed us to tell an entertaining story in just over two minutes.”

The ad has also been shared on the brand’s social media accounts (Twitter, Instagram and Facebook). As previously reported by Digiday, in-cinema advertising has tried to grow its offerings for advertisers, beefing up capabilities to lure cinema spending back to pre-pandemic levels.

Additionally, Sam’s Club is diversifying where and how they reach the retailer’s members for the holiday season. Aside from the faux-movie trailer-style ad for the cinema, “we’re broadening our awareness with CTV, media integrations and streaming audio,” said Gary, adding that the brand is leveraging a variety of mediums and that it has contracted singer/songwriter Kirby for an original song, “Merry Like This,” for the brand’s holiday marketing.

It is unclear how much of Sam Club’s advertising budget is allocated to this campaign as Gary declined to share budget specifics. According to Pathmatics data, the brand spent a little over $41 million so far on advertising in 2022 with the majority of the spend being on Meta platforms Facebook (40%) and Instagram (29%).

Sam’s Club is not the only brand to go out of its way for holiday marketing as it is back in full force this year with the purpose to gain visibility among shoppers in malls, entertainment venues, restaurants and traffic on congested freeways. A variety of brands are taking advantage of the holiday season, including Lowe’s, Foot Locker, and Ocean Spray.

“Consumers increasingly live their lives beyond the reach of traditional media, so it’s no wonder Sam’s Club have sought out new ways to drive their holiday campaign,” said Ed McLarno, SVP, regional experience strategy lead at the advertising agency RAPP. “And integrating across a novel format such as a movie trailer along with a music single release also increases their chances of generating some earned media.”