How esports companies are keeping fans engaged with adaptive, overlaid ads

Esports companies are investing in adaptive, overlaid advertising services in order to introduce livestream viewers to their brand partners without losing the engagement and interest of their fans.

Pre-roll and mid-roll ads are a universal aspect of the Twitch viewing experience. Users will often navigate to a Twitch stream only to watch a snippet of video before being thrust into a 15-second pre-roll. Though streamers try to run mid-roll ads during bathroom breaks or lulls between exciting moments, they can interfere with viewers’ ability to fully immerse themselves in content. Even ad blockers are only partially effective against such ads: the most popular options simply replace one’s Twitch feed with a blank and muted screen during pre- or mid-roll ad breaks.

During his time as CRO at esports organization Gen.G, Jordan Sherman experienced the frustration of pre-and mid-roll ads firsthand. “Gaming is kind of long,” Sherman said. “There are no natural breaks, there’s no halftime. So when you’re streaming something and there’s a commercial, at times it can be a bit of a frustrating experience.”

To reduce this frustration, Sherman — now the president and CCO of Immortals Gaming Club — partnered with Transmit, a picture-in-picture ad tech service, to broadcast a college esports event sponsored by Conoco. Transmit’s picture-in-picture services allowed Gen.G to broadcast the entire two-day “rivalry event” without ever cutting away to mid-rolls, and viewers were unfazed by the occasional presence of Conoco ads in a box on the side. 

Indeed, the idea that esports fans are wary of brand involvement is not quite true. If brands can be smoothly integrated into the viewing experience, viewers will instead perceive them as an affirmation of the legitimacy of the event or esport they are watching. “It was a bit of a myth to say that the gaming sector was against brands,” said Adam Harris, head of Twitch’s brand partnership studio. “They were always welcome because they’re seen as validation.”

Impressed by viewers’ engagement with the Conoco activation, Sherman is in the process of applying Transmit’s services to Immortals’ video and streaming content. “When you do things like picture-in-picture and you activate within a game like Minecraft, people react really well to it,” Sherman said. “If we just ran pre-rolls and put a brand name on it, it would have been cool, but it wouldn’t have really done anything.”