Every year, more and more brands enter the esports and streaming industry in order to reach a part of this multi-million dollar audience — among them both giants like Coca-Cola and exclusive brands like Louis Vuitton. Depending on the audience size and other factors, the cost of advertising on top broadcasts can reach millions of dollars. Streams Charts is looking at how the media value of such integrations can be estimated using the example of Asmongold who hosted OTK Gaming Expo.
As an example, we've taken the latest big event from One True King, winners of The Streamer Awards 2022 in the Best Content Organization category. It's a group of streamers and content creators that includes Asmongold, Mizkif and others (after the event, sodapoppin joined the team). It started as a group of World of Warcraft players, but has grown into a major gaming organization with its own events.
OTK Games Expo, a five-hour event where young video game developers presented 30 titles in dozens of different genres and received cash awards, was held at the WePlay Esports studio in early June. The event, streamed on the main Asmongold channel, was joined by sodapoppin, Nmplol, cyr and many others, and the exhibition itself proved to be extremely popular: the event accumulated more than 113K Average Viewers.
We analyzed the total airtime of the event, took into account viewership of the event and calculated how many times the logos of the companies appeared, how long they were on the screen and even what percentage of the screen that was occupied by the logos. Based on this data, we calculated the cost of all advertising.
Many brands cooperating with OTK were the sponsors of the event. Among them were Intel, Razer, Game Fuel and WePlay. We calculated how much it cost to put banners on the broadcast. It turned out that the total media value of the event surpassed $700K.
The most expensive, the most frequent and the longest-lasting type of advertising integration was a carousel banner with periodically changing brand logos (example). It was located at the top corner of the screen and appeared on the broadcast for the longest time — more than 67.8% of the total airtime. The total cost of the brands appearing in this banner was around $260K (more than 36%) of the total media value of the broadcast.
It should be noted that rapidly changing brand logos also appeared on additional HUD (example) used to display two screens on the broadcast (for example, during the interviews). However, they appeared on air quite rare, less than 10% of the airtime, due to which their cost was $36.5K, i.e. just over 5% of the total value.
Along with rapidly changing logos in the broadcast, there were also static images of logos — this type of integration was mainly used in various "plugs" and splash screens (example 1, 2). Such advertising appeared on the broadcast in 20% of the total airtime and, by our calculations, their total cost was $162.7K (23% of the total media value).
As well as advertising directly in the broadcast HUD, other integrations could be seen during the broadcast as well. Most of the airtime the broadcast was held from the WePlay Esports studio, where the sponsors' logos were also placed on the stage banners (example). Depending on the positioning of the logos on the screen, different brands reached 14% to 17% of the total stream airtime in this way. The total cost of such integration reached $107K (more than 15% of the total). It is worth mentioning that although such integrations were on air for almost the same time as a dynamic carousel at the bottom of the screen, their cost was lower. The main reason was that the logos were smaller, and this directly affected their 'visibility' on the screen.
In addition to static images on the stage, one could sometimes notice a running line displaying the sponsors. We estimate the cost of such placement at $20K (less than 3% of the total cost).
There was also classic product placement at OTK Games Expo: viewers often saw brand logos thanks to advertising products on the screen (on laptops, chairs, etc.) as well. In total, product placement cost more than $102K, the most expensive of all was the appearance of logos on Game Fuel cans, and the cheapest was the appearance of Razer logos on headsets.
Finally, we should mention the commercials that were also on the broadcast. In total, five such integrations were shown during the broadcast, with a total duration of less than five minutes, but their total cost (according to our calculations) is over $11K.
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According to our calculations, the appearance of sponsors' logos on screen alone could cost the companies more than $700K in total. Most of the promotional appearances were the sponsors' logos on HUD broadcasts in a static form and in the form of a pinned carousel.
To sum up, sponsors with either a larger logo or more placements during the broadcast (in the form of product placement, additional banners, etc.) benefited the most. For example, some brands lost media value because their logos on stage were not seen because of the commentators, but those whose logos were further away from the casters and not blocked by them got extra airtime.
It is worth noting that the share of product placement turned out to be quite significant: for Game Fuel and Razer it accounted for 18-20% of the total for the brand, and in the overall structure of media value its contribution was 14.6%. Note that in terms of media value, both companies would be ahead of Intel even without PP (albeit slightly).
