Brief:

• Amazon's livestreaming platform Twitch will provide more data about esports and gaming viewership as part of a deal with Comscore. The media measurement company will quantify video metrics such as minutes spent and content minutes per ad minute on Twitch, per an announcement.
• Comscore will provide third-party data and insights into Twitch's audiences in the U.S. and Canada, with the goal of helping advertisers to understand the video consumption habits of those consumers. The data can help marketers to identify key audience segments and adjust their ad campaigns to reach consumers.​
• Comscore is also working to expand its integration with Twitch to additional markets and to offer advertisers category- and genre-level audience data. The goal is to help advertisers understand viewership trends in livestreamed gaming and esports, Carol Hinnant, chief revenue officer at Comscore, said in a statement.

Insight:

As brands look for ways to reach Twitch's growing audience for livestreamed gaming and esports programming, they could welcome more capabilities around third-party data, which can help measure the effectiveness of campaigns and hone marketing strategies. By working with Comscore, Twitch is taking a step to provide more transparency about the viewing habits of its audiences, including how much time they spend watching sponsorship messages and livestreamed content.

That information helps to provide a more complete picture of Twitch's user base, which researcher eMarketer forecast could grow by 14% to 37.5 million this year and reach about 16% of the U.S. audience for digital video. Part of that growth can be attributed to Twitch's expansion beyond video game streaming and into live events.

Twitch this week signed a three-year deal with the National Women's Soccer League to stream regular-season games within the U.S., and the entire season outside the country. Twitch has also streamed NFL, NBA G League and National Women's Hockey League games. However, Twitch also faces growing competition from YouTube Gaming, Facebook Gaming and Microsoft Mixer, which have expanded their audiences and lured away popular influencers and content creators that initially gained fame and followers on Twitch.

Additionally, Comscore's data could help glean more insights into the audience for esports events, whose viewership is set to surge more than 50% to 46.2 million viewers by 2023, eMarketer forecast last year. More complete data about esports audiences can help to support industry growth as sponsors seek to measure ROI and other metrics.

Brands looking to reach these millions of fans were expected to boost sponsorship spending by 34% to $457 million last year, games researcher Newzoo predicted. Already, brands such as AT&T, Axe, Hershey and Snickers have piled into esports sponsorships to connect with younger audiences who are elusive to other media outlets.