Twitch has introduced a Boost feature which allows for streams to reach a wider audience. The difference between this Boost feature and the one you may have seen on Facebook is that Twitch will allow viewers to boost the streams of their favourite content creators. The feature has only been rolled out to the platform’s “research community”.
The streaming platform discussed this new feature in their recent Patch Notes developer live stream. Similar to how boosting works on social media, the feature will allow viewers to buy “impressions” for their favourite streamers. For those of you unfamiliar with digital marketing lingo, impressions track the number of times a certain piece of content is shown to users. As shown in the video, you’ll be able to purchase various tiers of impressions, with the example showing a $2.97 cost for 3000 impressions. With enough impressions, community members can push their favourite streamers onto the Recommended Channels section.
“Communities want us to make Boost more available, and second, communities want us to make it more impactful,” said product manager, Jacob Rosok. He went on to mention that there are three major aspects to the experiment, based on community feedback. Boost will be available to content creators multiple times, even as often as once per stream. Secondly, multiple boost tiers will give community members the option to purchase more impressions. Lastly, Twitch aims to be extremely transparent with this feature. Twitch will call out community members who purchase boosts and even showcase how many impressions were garnered by the end of it.
As with most marketing based tools, there will be pros and cons. Smaller streamers will stand to benefit from this feature if their audience supports them via boosting their content. Conversely , this could also lead to a number of brand sponsored streams crowding up the airwaves. The feature is still in the research phase, so we could see a few changes once it fully rolls out.
This isn’t the first time Twitch is experimenting with a Boost feature. The platform held a trial run last year which was not based on real money, but viewers' channel points instead.