Twitch bets on livestream shopping with expanded holiday programming

• Amazon-owned streaming platform Twitch is reviving its Pog Picks livestream shopping event timed to the holiday season, according to details shared with Marketing Dive. The event sees separate activations in the U.S., Canada, U.K. and Germany.
• Pog Picks, produced by Twitch’s Brand Partnership Studio and hosted by Twitch streamers, showcases products from both editorial picks and brand sponsorships, and encourages viewers to compete in a series of gaming challenges and polls to win featured products. 
• The holiday event has experienced promising growth over its lifespan, the release details, and its return sees the streaming platform continuing to place bets on livestream shopping, despite a retraction in the tactic evident elsewhere.

While some have leaned away from livestream shopping this year, Twitch is pushing full steam ahead with its holiday-timed Pog Picks, citing stats from Coresight Research that projects the shopping format will grow to be a $20 billion market this year compared to $6 billion in 2020. The announcement follows decisions by other major players, like Meta-owned Facebook and Alphabet’s YouTube, to focus less on long-form video in favor of shorter formats, which have seen a rise in part from the success of ByteDance-owned TikTok.

Pog Picks, a gaming event named using the Twitch term “Pog,” which is often meant to denote something that is excellent or awesome, has this year shown up outside of the holidays, including in a livestream event around Amazon Prime Day and during back-to-school shopping. Twitch already hosted its first holiday-geared event, “Pog Picks: MultEHverse,” geared toward Canadian viewers on Nov. 8. The event advertised new technology deals and saw nearly 70,000 unique viewers on streamer bobajenny’s Twitch channel, where the three-hour show was hosted. Sponsors of the livestream included Samsung, Doritos, Chromebook, The Source and others.

In the U.S. market, “Pog Picks: Holiday Hive” will be held Dec. 10 beginning at 9 p.m. ET. The three-hour event will feature Spotlight product segments, QVC-inspired late-night infomercial demos and a “stream picks” shopping extension with clickable carousels overlaid on a stream. The show’s premier in 2021 saw over 1.5 million live views.

Hosted by streamers from the U.K. and Germany, shoppers on Nov. 25 at 10 a.m. ET can tune into a Black Friday themed shopping event that will see Twitch’s first social-commerce production in Europe, per release details. The event will include a slew of product showcases and sponsor segments, including from Krafton Games’ title “PUBG: Battleground” and Warner Bros. Games’ title “Gotham Knights,” among others. Some products on display will be the Google Pixel 7 and a Pico virtual reality headset.

Twitch reports that Pog Picks has nearly tripled its sponsorship revenue year-over-year, a feat attributed to the advertising knowledge stemming from its e-commerce behemoth of an owner paired with the streamer’s knowledge in creator-driven content. This year sees the platform on track to double the number of Pog Picks shows it hosts compared to 2021, Adam Harris, global head of Twitch’s Brand Partnership Studio, said in the release.

“We’ve seen tremendous growth from our Pog Picks productions, and are continuing to experiment with new formats to make them more entertaining and interactive,” Harris said.