The Promotional Effects of Live Streams by Twitch Influencers

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Reference :

Huang, Y., & Morozov, I. (2025). The Promotional Effects of Live Streams by Twitch Influencers. Marketing Science, 44(4), 916–932. https://doi-org.devinci.idm.oclc.org/10.1287/mksc.2022.0400

Keywords: influencer marketing, live streaming , video games

Summary :

The study examines whether live streams on Twitch actually increase the popularity and usage of video games.

The researchers used a quantitative empirical approach based on causal analysis and high-frequency data tracking.

Development: 

The researchers aim to define the causal effect between live streaming and the number of people playing a game.

in order to do that they used a quantitative approach using instrumental variable (IV) strategy , generalized random forests (GRF) to study heterogeneous effects across game and finally econometric modeling to isolate the effect of streaming from normal fluctuations in game popularity.

Data was collected through Twitch streamings monitoring 60 000 Twitch streamers every 10 minutes over 8 months for 599 games

They recorded:

  • whether streamers were live
  • which game they streamed
  • number of viewers
  • stream titles
  • sponsorship indicators.

Key findings:

– Live streaming does increase Games usage  with an estimated elasticity of 0.027. 

however it weakened by about 30% every hour and disappeared after 7 hours.

-Sponsored streams are actually less effective than organic streams and consumers viewed sponsored promotions as less trustworthy. (organice streams had 6 times more usage than sponsored ones.)

 

Limitations: 

The study focuses specifically on:

  • video games
  • Twitch
  • Steam users.

Therefore, results may not fully apply to:

  • other industries
  • other live-commerce platforms like TikTok Live or Amazon Live.