Twitch Chief Product Officer Mike Minton said the number of creators getting brand sponsorships through Twitch has grown four times since last year, and that the money paid to them has doubled, in an interview with Net Influencer at TwitchCon San Diego on November 13.
“Almost every creator will tell you they want to do more brand deals. They don’t know how to find brand deals. They’re hard to get,” Minton said. Twitch’s Creator Sponsorships tool has “increased the number of creators [who have] gotten sponsorship by four times and doubled the amount of money going out.”
Live streams can still worry advertisers. “The unpredictable nature of live can be concerning,” Minton said. Twitch’s answer is Campaign Assist, which alerts a streamer privately during a broadcast when they miss a brand’s talking point. The tool launched in the U.S. on September 30 and will roll out globally in December Minton said the tool gives brands “a much better peace of mind” that creators will stay within their brand safety standards
Twitch also matches brands with streamers. Minton said the company’s matchmaking tool weighs the type of content a streamer makes, how brand-safe they are, who watches them and how well they have delivered past campaigns. For a brand new to Twitch, Minton recommended starting with programmatic ads through Amazon’s ad platform, then adding Creator Sponsorships, with Amazon’s measurement tools on top. For the holiday shopping season, Minton advised brands to “go bigger, work with multiple creators, and try to think about putting on a show.” Taco Bell, adidas and Brooks Running are among the brands outside gaming that have bought sponsored or gifted subscriptions through Creator Sponsorships, according to Twitch.
Sponsorships Opened to Affiliates in August
The growth follows Twitch’s decision in August to open brand sponsorships to all Affiliates, the tier below Partner. Twitch made the move after two Minecraft campaigns in which more than half of the paid streamers were Affiliates. At TwitchCon Rotterdam in May, the company said three times as many streamers were taking part in Creator Sponsorships as in 2025.
In June, Minton told Net Influencer that the program was bringing brand deals to smaller streamers for the first time. Games publishers remain the simplest buyers because their goal is “eyeballs on their game.” Brands outside gaming want sales, so Twitch is building shopping features that let a brand measure a purchase made during a stream
Minton Says Live Reaches Fewer People but Holds Them Longer
Brands that come to Twitch from other platforms have to learn how live numbers work. “One of the things that I think brands that have advertised on Instagram or other places that come to Twitch need to understand is the difference between live and views,” Minton said. In Minton’s words, live “is going to be comparatively smaller in terms of reach, but the benefit is that depth.”
Minton sees clips closing that gap. Twitch communities already repost moments from streams across social media. “That story that it’s 100 concurrent viewers now becomes a much more powerful story because nice, clippable 30-second clips are going across social media and it’s mostly earned media at that point,” Minton said. In its TwitchCon San Diego keynote the same day, Twitch said views in its Clips feed have doubled since January.
Twitch is also changing its ad formats. About half of Twitch’s monthly viewers watch on a phone, and more than 70% of new viewers arrive from mobile, according to Twitch. Its six-second vertical ads have not yet “cracked the nut” with advertisers, Minton said. Skippable ads are now live. Twitch is also developing an opt-in format for entertainment brands in which viewers earn small digital rewards for watching an ad. An earlier version that let viewers earn Bits by watching ads “didn’t scale,” Minton said, and Twitch turned it off.
Minton said figuring out how short-form content can work for brands is a focus for Twitch heading into 2027, calling it “an opportunity for both creators as well as brands in terms of figuring out how to have the best of both worlds, that reach as well as that deep engagement.”
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