It is hard to imagine modern life without social networks, where people spend a significant amount of their time there. They share emotions and thoughts, communicate with relatives and friends, obtain education, entertain themselves, and even work. There are dozens of social platforms in the world, from global ones like Facebook and Twitter to more local projects prevalent in a specific country, region, or industry.
There are multiple social networks, but they are all based on a common mechanism that determines audience engagement. In short, the more followers you have, the more reactions (likes, shares, or comments) you will receive on your posts. Twitch also serves as a social network to some extent, but its main indicator of audience engagement is how regularly a viewer watches the broadcasts (thus, comments and emojis in the chat can also indicate the level of engagement). Streams Charts has tracked how audience engagement dynamics change with the increased number of Twitch followers. Its dynamics turned out to be different from other social networks.
Recently, The Influencer Marketing Factory conducted an analysis of audience engagement using TikTok as an example. The Chinese social network showed consistent growth in this metric, depending on the number of subscribers. For example, accounts with 100K-500K followers have an engagement rate of about 9.7% — this proportion of followers leaves their reactions to the author's content. As the number of followers increases, the coefficient gradually increases as well. At the 1M-5M subscribers level, it reached 10.3%, and at the 10+M number, it was already at 10.5%. The growth is indeed small but consistent across all major metrics: likes, comments, views, etc.
Streams Charts has determined audience engagement on channels based on several factors: the number of chatters, messages, and the average number of viewers relative to the number of followers. It was found that, unlike TikTok and other social networks, Twitch channels quickly transition from an upward to a downward trend in audience engagement, and this directly depends on the number of followers. At some point, a formula comes into play: the more followers a channel has, the smaller the proportion of those who react to the streamer's broadcasts (leave comments, watch streams, etc.). Starting from 100K followers, a stable downward trend can be noticed across all these reactions.
Viewers Engagement Based on Channels' Followers Count
Unlike most social networks, a large number of Twitch followers does not always guarantee a proportional number of viewers
To analyze the dynamics, we have tracked the audience engagement coefficient among streamers with different numbers of followers. For example, for streamers with 100K-500K followers, the ratio of chatters to followers was 4.5%. For streamers with 1M-5M followers, this coefficient is slightly above 3%, and at the 10+M followers mark, it drops to 1.75%. In other words, an increase in followers hardly contributes to an increase in the proportion of active chatters.
A similar situation is observed with the number of messages. For relatively smaller streamers with an audience of 100K-500K followers, this coefficient often exceeds 100%. This is a normal situation since one viewer can write dozens of messages during a stream. However, for top streamers with an audience of 5M-10M followers, the engagement coefficient for messages drops to around 40-42%.
Charts with the coefficient on Average Viewers on broadcasts also show downward dynamics but without clear drops. The more followers a streamer has, the smaller the share of those who regularly watch broadcasts and send messages in the chat. At the same time, these values can grow in absolute numbers.
What Does Downward Trend In Audience Engagement Mean?
The growth of followers is an important trigger for increasing audience engagement. As we mentioned earlier, the more followers/subscribers a channel has, the more reactions they tend to give. However, unlike other social networks, audience engagement on Twitch is almost always declining. Streams Charts has analyzed the level of viewer engagement on Twitch channels from July to August 2023. If we look at the ratio of Average Viewers to the number of followers, this coefficient only increases up to a certain threshold, ranging from 3.4 million to 4 million followers.
After reaching a certain number of followers, channel growth begins to slow down. Streamers do not see an increase in viewership during their broadcasts, nor do they see an increase in the number of chatters and messages from them.
Descending dynamics after the 4M mark and extraordinary performance at the 15M mark bcoz of ibai
To some extent, the difference between a channel with 4 million followers and one with over 10 million can be considered insignificant and does not impact the level of audience engagement. Let's take, for example, the channel of Ninja, who has over 18 million followers on Twitch, yet his streams only gather around 10-15K Peak Viewers. And there are many examples like this.
A rare exception to this rule is when top streamers host special broadcasts that anomalously increase audience engagement. For instance, the boxing event La Velada del Año 3 hosted by ibai attracted over 3.4 million Peak Viewers, setting a new Twitch record. Such epic-scale broadcasts are rare, and Ibai is a unique example: he is indeed able to attract a huge audience through show events like La Velada del Año and Kings League, but his regular streams, which occur more frequently, usually gather only 35K-70K Peak Viewers (sometimes up to 100K). And that is with 15M followers on his channel.
What Are The Reasons for Downward Dynamics?
There may be many reasons for the downward dynamics of audience engagement. Firstly, regular broadcast viewing usually involves a lot of time. Not every viewer is ready to spend a few hours a week, or even every day. This is a different format of reaction than simply putting a like on an Instagram post. Accordingly, the downward dynamics of audience engagement are not a surprise.
Secondly, the popularity of streamers often depends on the content they are streaming. For example, a streamer might play a new hyped game, and new followers come to watch their stream specifically because of that game. However, in the future, when a streamer switches to another game, these viewers may stop watching streams. Unfortunately, the tastes of streamers and viewers do not always align. In fact, these viewers become "dead souls" on the channel: they continue to be followers, but they do not actively participate in the channel's life, they do not watch the streams, send messages, etc. On the other hand, if a streamer only plays one game all the time, the effect can be similar: viewers may simply get tired of watching the same thing and stop visiting the channel. Games also often become outdated, both individually and as entire genres. That is why top streamers like ibai try to come up with ambitious projects that go beyond traditional live streaming — they play soccer show matches in big stadiums, host ceremonies and industry awards, organize gaming conventions, and so on. Such major events can regain the attention of followers who have long stopped following the channel.
Another reason is the high competition among streamers, who often stream similar content or broadcast at the same time. Viewers often follow dozens of top streamers, but they physically cannot watch them all simultaneously. Typically, they closely follow only 1-2 channels and visit the rest infrequently.
Among the other reasons are bots that follow streamers but are not actually live viewers and do not participate in the channel's life. Streamers themselves often give viewers reasons to stop watching them. For example, when they get involved in scandals, drastically change the type of content they produce, or simply go on a creative hiatus.
Streamers With Top Audience Engagement
Twitch streamers with best and worst viewers engagements
We have selected Twitch channels with the highest level of audience engagement from June to August 2023. We have looked at the ratio of Average viewership to the total number of followers. The leader in this metric, with a result of 2.37%, is the channel of French streamer RebeuDeter. During the summer, his channel had 1.35 million followers, and the Average Viewers number during his streams reached 32.1K.
In the Top 5 for this metric are also the channels of PaulinhoLOKObr, shongxbong, fps_shaka, and stylishnoob4. They have between 1 million and 2.5 million followers, with viewer engagement rates ranging from 1.9% to 2.32%. To understand how significant this is, we can look at the five streamers with the lowest audience engagement. The lowest metric belongs to American streamer ops1x, with only 0.004%. In other words, despite having over 1.35 million followers, his streams during the summer were watched on average by only 60 people.
Why is it important to understand the dynamics of audience engagement? On the one hand, it is important for streamers in order to properly track the progress of the channel. On the other hand, advertisers and potential partner companies of influencers often pay attention to the number of streamers' followers. In this article, we have shown that this metric is often misleading, and the viewership difference between streamers with 4M and 10+ million followers can be quite insignificant.
