Text/Yiguang Flow

There is only less than half a month left before 2025, and the overseas market will also usher in one of the most important marketing nodes in the near future: Q5.

As we observed last year, with the arrival of Christmas and New Year's Day, people are infected by the atmosphere of "saying goodbye to the old and welcoming the new", which naturally leads to a highly active cycle of entertainment and shopping.

Especially for game products, not only will players be more receptive to new products and new paid items, but the purchase cost of many games will also decrease. For example, Pangle and other advertising platforms have observed a downward trend in CPI.

It's just that when it comes to how to seize this node, most game manufacturers will immediately think of launching the theme content corresponding to the festival in the game, or simply engage in a wave of recharge benefits, and a small number of manufacturers may come up with suitable leisure products to take advantage of the situation to expand the basic market...... But this is still the same as the regular distribution operation.

So the question is, when we switch the perspective to the outside of the game, it is not difficult to find that almost all entertainment fields are seizing the node of Q5, competing for the attention and early adopter energy of users in a year's leisure.

Interestingly, at the Amazon Ads unboxing ceremony at the beginning of last month, Grape Jun unexpectedly found a case sharing of "Black Myth: Wukong" - this is somewhat different, but I also had an idea: it is better to extend the idea of this product and see how Amazon's resource channels and playing strategies can help game products.

01

Twitch: Black Myth Takes Root Overseas

The position of the player community

Let's take a look at two data first: first, the number of concurrent online users in the world of "Black Myth: Wukong" on Twitch at that time reached the first place in the overseas performance of Chinese games in 2024, and I believe that this data will not change again this year. Second, according to indicators such as reach and interaction, Amazon Ads has also rated "Black Myth: Wukong" to the highest level.

For "Black Myth: Wukong" at that time, as a single-player game, in most cases, the sales of the first few weeks, especially the first week, would account for a large proportion. Therefore, successfully attracting the attention of potential players before the game is launched, and stimulating discussion in the player community, will greatly improve the publicity effect of the game. In this way, the dissemination of information can be carried out in a more rhythmic manner, and the interest and expectation of players in the game can be maintained, so that the sales can be maximized during the golden period of the first week of the game's launch.

Therefore, "Black Myth: Wukong" focuses on Amazon's Twitch live broadcast, and uses the creators to maintain the popularity of "Black Myth: Wukong" as much as possible by virtue of the influence of the anchors + advertising. In the end, a positive cycle of "traffic-live streaming-purchase" is formed.

A big advantage is that Amazon Ads has a lot of mature measurement and analysis tools to help the game plan upfront, combined with first-party data from game science and third-party global data accumulated by the Black Myth: Wukong promotion team, they quickly determined the advertising strategy, almost "in one draft".

The rest of the work is the inevitable ad optimization process, involving different groups of people, different streamers, different anchor content, different ad creatives and other aspects, which has achieved the explosive initial popularity of "Black Myth: Wukong" on Twitch.

Speaking of which, it can be seen that the launch strategy of "Black Myth: Wukong" is worth referring to and excavating, especially now that the time node is in Q5, which is fiercely competitive, and there will be some challenges for overseas games that want to seize this opportunity, but it is not impossible to overcome.

First of all, due to the involvement of Christmas and New Year's Day, to make efforts in Q5, whether it is a new product or an old product, it is impossible to avoid the corresponding holiday-themed content, naturally, whether in the game or outside the game, this kind of holiday-themed activities need more active users, as well as higher interaction indicators to support. For example, new versions in the game, themed versions, new lotteries, promotions, and topics outside the game, voting, and continuous social interaction.

Secondly, different products will naturally form fierce competition in the face of the same node at the same time, including the in-game version content, the attractiveness of the event content to players, the quality of community maintenance outside the game, and more importantly, the intensity and effect of advertising during this period.

In the face of these challenges, how do you stand out from the crowd?

For one, Twitch's users include a large and naturally high-value gaming community.

Twitch has more than 105 million monthly visits1, 63 million unique MAUs2, and 7 million streamers stream every month3. In addition, Twitch users spend an average of 1.5 billion hours per month watching gaming content4, which is a testament to the sheer base of Twitch gaming users.

Broadened, Twitch users also have several obvious characteristics: one is the young group: seventy percent of Twitch users are 18~24 years old, this group of new generation users is very receptive to new brands and is open to brand advertising. They have a wide range of interests, enjoy social and interaction, are willing to try new things, and have a level of spending that supports their interests and hobbies. Another user uniqueness is that 65% of Twitch viewers can't reach through other social channels, and more than half are willing to buy the advertised product. It can be seen that brand owners, including games, who focus on young users, are suitable for gold mining on Twitch.

Second, we will work with Twitch creators to bridge the gap between brands and audiences.

According to Twitch research, more than six out of ten respondents said they would prefer to consider a streamer-supported brand5. The impact of younger users on Twitch is the divergence, tension, and interactivity of content. There are always streamers with a very diverse style waiting for users to choose from on Twitch, whether it is technical, serious, funny, or bizarre. That's why Twitch streamers can always give you something to do with each of the most popular products, such as playing Only Up!

A real-world example of this is Black Godification: Wukong's advertising partnership through Twitch's bounty boardfeature, which is a tool that can help promote gameplay features, trailers, products, and experiences. Let the core selling point of this game be quickly known to users:

"How we define our core users directly determines our partnership with Twitch creators and streamers. For example, the Bounty board is an interesting advertising product, which is like a bounty job posted in a charlatan tavern. The game company posts a task that describes how to stream their game, such as defeating a boss without taking damage, and I'll give you a bonus for reaching that goal. ”

"It is conceivable that the higher the threshold for task setting, the fewer streamers can take on tasks. After discussion, You Ke finally chose to directly relate the task design to its core selling point, which can be described as a very high threshold. In the performance of the Black Goku Bounty Board in the United States, the completion rate of the activity task is nearly 80%. Viewing time is far longer than the average watch time. This result also shows that the streamer has a higher investment and live streaming effect6. ”

Third, advertising on Twitch not only has a mature basic environment, but also can be very changeable. Twitch is known for its gaming content, but its users also have a strong focus on non-gaming content, such as electronic devices, trendy markets, and automotive categories that male users focus on. Therefore, Twitch is also a unique medium for many cross-sector brands to reach Gen Z users.

For example, Samsung mobile phones release new products, and the advertising goal is to improve the brand influence of the new generation of people. By hosting live events on Twitch and partnering with Twitch creators to customize content, the official live stream attracted 153,000 unique users in just 6 hours, and the entire event-related content was shown on Twitch to more than 12 million and reached 2.3 million unique users.

How can brands promote on Twitch?

Overall, Twitch has a natural high degree of matching for game manufacturers, and can integrate the community influence of streamers to promote brands. In addition, with high-impact video and display advertising campaigns, ads are placed on the Twitch homepage, browse page, and channel page to accurately target the player base to increase brand exposure.

At the same time, for special nodes such as Q5, its interactive user groups can also well assist the game in large-node marketing and operation, and increase user stickiness inside and outside the game. Broadened down, the most valuable part of Twitch is the large number of young users, which is a treasure trove for any product looking to expand its audience.

02

Dig deeper: Behind Amazon

A bigger medium for entertainment

In fact, Twitch is only one of Amazon's touchpoints, and many manufacturers often need to reach a wide range of potential players from a variety of channels when formulating advertising strategies. When you need to make a fuss about "breadth", using Amazon Ads' huge resource system can be a powerful way to play. Perhaps this is still relatively new to many game manufacturers, and it is necessary to first understand what the structure of Amazon Ads is, what its value is, and why it is worth advertising.

One of the major characteristics of Amazon is that the radiation area is wide enough.

Many people's impression of Amazon is still stuck in the impression of the early Kindle. In fact, Amazon already has Amazon Store, Streaming TV, Prime Video, Twitch, IMDb, Amazon Music, and various devices such as Fire TV and Alexa support. Amazon can be said to be the king of traffic, covering different touchpoints in the lives of overseas consumers.

For example, Prime Video can reach more than 200 million global customers per month through advertising7, and these users are high-quality and have a high consumer base. This radiation range determines that Amazon Ads can influence users' consumption decisions anytime and anywhere.

At the same time, enriching the contact points of streaming media advertising is worth paying attention to, for game manufacturers, going overseas is often a test of long-term operation, and in the long term, it is necessary to expand brand influence to find growth points, which is difficult to do by relying on conventional buying alone, and the cost of traditional TV advertising may be too high. Streaming TV ads are similar to traditional TV ads, but they are more flexible and easier for game manufacturers to explore the right content to expand brand awareness and influence.

And, with programmatic Amazon DSP advertising, advertisers can easily tailor the type and placement of ads they want to deliver across all of Amazon's own advertising channels, even third-party media and platforms.

It can be said that when we look at Amazon now, it is no longer appropriate to use a label of "Amazon Mall" to summarize it, which can deeply influence overseas users through a wide range of touchpoints, as well as a large number of high-value entertainment audiences. So for manufacturers who are deeply involved in the gaming circle, it is easy to find hardcore players on Twitch; For games that urgently need a large number of users to support their products, they can cast a wide net on streaming channels to attract high-quality users; For products that have been in business for many years and need to go to the next level, they can also improve player interaction and release brand influence through gameplay with high social attributes.

In addition, Amazon Ads has a lot of deep value for game manufacturers.

Amazon Ads not only has a wide coverage, but also has a very mature understanding and insight into overseas markets over the years, even if it is just a quick understanding of the situation in overseas markets, it can quickly fill the lack of experience of domestic manufacturers when they go overseas. In particular, Amazon has been able to achieve more accurate and granular audience identification based on billions of first-party signals, third-party signals, and leading advertising technology.

At the same time, the more granular Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC) audience function can also help advertisers integrate multi-party data, conduct more detailed analysis, and more easily call the analyzed Custom Audience into Amazon DSP for advertising.

Combined with the points mentioned above, it can be found that for game manufacturers, Amazon Ads is a huge resource library that can be explored in depth, and at present, "Black Myth: Wukong" has opened a window of cooperation, and for more game manufacturers, they can also refer to similar strategies and try to develop this field with great potential.

03

There is one more way for the game to go to sea

One more chance

Nowadays, it is not easy for domestic game manufacturers to mix overseas, in addition to adapting to the culture and local market environment of many regions at the product level, they also have to face the challenges of countless competitors in many popular tracks and major nodes such as Q5.

In the face of this huge, complex and changeable overseas market, it is difficult for game manufacturers to take care of every detail on their own, and overseas game competition has reached this point, and most regions have entered the stage of keeping up with high-quality products. This requires game manufacturers to make up for each of their own shortcomings, not only the game content must meet the standards of the current market, but also the auxiliary marketing methods cannot be missing.

After all, professionalism for game manufacturers, in addition to consolidating the player base, is more important to "down-to-earth" to understand every touch point of overseas consumers, and in the face of future global market competition, everyone will have more confidence to quickly master this new hand.

All in all, the overseas market is large enough to support the different playing styles of game manufacturers, so one more path will have one more chance of success.

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