Twitch Focusing On Live Shopping Streams

During the boom of the live shopping streams via video, Amazon’s popular live streaming platform Twitch is now getting into the mix in the ultra-competitive market that has proven to be a massive money maker for marketers.

We have seen major shifts in this market and more and more attention going to it as evidenced from QVC and the Home Shopping Network announcing a partnership with Roku to collaboratively launch the first free live video shopping streams within the Roku Channel.

This also echoes the move Walmart made when back in September Walmart Connect officially unveiled an Innovation Partners category that currently consists of only live video shopping integrations.

Twitch has been making their mark in this sector, and hosted its third “Pog Picks” live shopping event the days before Thanksgiving and has expanded the non-endemic brands on its platform, going beyond the markets of video games and electronic manufacturers.

Twitch’s Pog Picks (“pog,” and acronym for “play of the game,” is gaming slang for something excellent) features a mix of curated products selected by staff and Twitch influencers as well as sponsored brand insertions.

“If I was to distill down what Pog Picks is, it’s kind of QVC meets Japanese game show,” Adam Harris, global head of the Twitch Brand Partnership Studio said, according to AdExchanger. “This is a young and very skeptical audience,” Harris said, “and there’s a certain live community environment they expect to see.”

“This audience wants to be interactive and part of a community experience,” Harris continued. “What we know [about people on Twitch] is that if you frame the offer as, ‘We’re all a part of this and you could win something for the whole community,’ they tend to jump in and do it.”

“Live shopping is an important part of the behaviors that we want the audience to be exhibiting,” Harris said. “That behavior of spending on the service is something we want to cultivate,” Harris said, “because it leads directly to our creators being able to earn a living doing what they love.”