A huge audience turned to Twitch to get more of their entertainment in November, according to data from Arsenal.gg — as pointed out by a StreamElements analysis. Viewers watched nearly 1.7 billion hours of Twitch content during the month. That is up slightly over October. Facebook Gaming’s video viewership more than doubled year over year, though this comes with the caveat that Facebook has made dubious claims in the past about the size of its video audience.
While gaming is still the core of Twitch’s business, the platform is growing by expanding its appeal. You can see the success of that reflected in the rising popularity of the Just Chatting category. That was the No. 1 segment with 228 million hours watched in November, which is up 246% year over year.
One of the ways Twitch is growing is by making the site welcoming to a variety of interests. That includes promoting content that might appeal more to the women, which are already a huge presence on Twitch.
“Women are more than 40% of the gaming lifestyle scene,” StreamElements chief executive officer Doron Nir said. “[That makes] livestreaming platforms the next frontier for beauty products. Over the past 12 months, we’ve seen the beauty category on Twitch grow over 260% in terms of hours watched with cosmetic brands like L’Oréal, MAC, Em, Hero, and e.l.f. already dipping their toes in the water.”
Since Twitch already has a large number of creators and viewers who are interested in both games and beauty products, the hard part is already done for brands. The remaining challenge for these companies is connecting with the right streamer.
“The brands who do their homework, align with the right creators, and leverage the latest streaming tools for more integrated campaigns are going to flourish the most in this nascent market place,” said Nir.
StreamElements, of course, provides those tools.
