Twitch Embraces Ecommerce with Amazon Associates
Twitch announced today it is enabling broadcasters to further monetize their streams by participating in the Amazon Associates affiliate program, providing a seamless way for audiences to buy select products.
The leading social video platform for gamers, Twitch boasts 10 million daily active users who each average 106 minutes of video watched per day. Top gamers all have their preferred gear— from computers and controllers to headsets and chairs. But until now, fans had no easy and direct way to buy their favorite gamer's gear. Fans were left wondering why that gear wasn't for sale on Amazon, and leading gamers were missing out on a key way to monetize their fanbase.
Announced at a Twitch event in Seattle Thursday, Gear on Amazon is one of more than 20 extensions Twitch developers soon will be able to incorporate from the new revamped Twitch developer tools. Gear on Amazon connects Amazon Associates directly to Twitch. For the first time, Twitch Partners (20,000 of the the top broadcasters on the platform) and Affiliates (other streamers aspiring to be partners) will be able to join the program and receive revenue when their viewers buy select products.
But Wait, There's More
The 20+ other extensions announced on Thursday give broadcasters the opportunity to add polls, leaderboards, virtual pets, interactive game information, and many other overlays and panels for a more engaging experience.
"Eight-five percent of Partner streamers have authorized a third-party app on Twitch," said Twitch extensions product manager Ryan Lubinski at the event. "In total over 130,000 applications have been registered. We have over four million API calls made every minute." That makes Twitch a huge technical playground in which developers can quickly build, test, and learn what types of apps the community wants.
The new features include the following:
- Gear on Amazon is a panel that highlights Partners' and Affiliates' favorite products on Amazon, making it easy for viewers to find and purchase them. It also helps fans support their favorite creators, since members of the Amazon Associates program earn commissions.
- Smart Click Maps by Ex Machina show a heatmap of clicks, allowing viewers to suggest the creator's next move, card, or weapon by clicking directly on the video.
- Kappa Pet by Porcupine is a virtual pet that lives on the channel page, responds to viewers, evolves as the stream runs, and goes to sleep when the creator is offline.
- Loyalty, Music, Polls & Games by Streamlabs shows loyalty points, receives song requests displays polls, lets viewers enter giveaways, and hosts mini-games.
- Overlay by Muxy is a stream overlay with many interactive apps. In beta testing of the overlays, 30,000 users made 3.2 million clicks in 24 hours.
- Schedule by Layer One keeps the community up to date on what scheduled Twitch events are happening in their local timezone.
- What's Playing by Pretzel Tech shows what music is currently playing on a stream.
Any developer can build extension products for the Twitch community. The developer portal can be found at dev.twitch.tv and the Twitch developers day will be held on October 19, a day before the larger TwitchCon, which runs Oct 20-22. Both events are in Long Beach, CA.
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