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Video Streaming for Gaming: Part 1 Overview
StreamElements' top competitors include StreamLabs and Muxy. While ad spend and user acquisition costs are not publicly available for these companies, the online video gaming industry spent $37 billion on advertising in 2017. StreamElements uses the most extensive back-end advertising web technologies, however. In terms of overall online gaming video streaming viewers, Twitch still dominates the market with at least 200 games, nearly 10 million daily active users and 2.9 million monthly broadcasters. YouTube Live Gaming is catching up quickly, growing exponentially compared to Twitch. The number of concurrent viewers is growing at a steady pace for both platforms.
STREAMELEMENTS COMPETITORS
StreamLabs and Muxy appear to be the top competitors for StreamLabs, based on industry articles offering comparison data. An article at Medium on the best tools for Twitch streaming count StreamLabs, StreamElements, Bebo, Muxy, and StreamJar among the top tools for Twitch streaming. Throughout my research, StreamLabs (formerly TwitchAlerts) was most often compared to StreamElements and appears to be considered the top choice for live streamers. Muxy came up most often after StreamLabs as a competitor of StreamElements.
AD SPEND AND USER ACQUISITION
After an extensive search of company websites and industry and business news sources, I found no data regarding the ad spend or user acquisition costs of the aforementioned companies (StreamElements, StreamLabs, and Muxy). I suspect the reason for this lack of data is the fact that these companies are private and not required to publish financial data.
To offer some insight into the advertising efforts of these companies, I searched BuiltWith, a database that aggregates data on the back-end web technologies used by a website. In terms of advertising, StreamElements uses Google Remarketing, Twitter ads, DoubleClick, Facebook Custom Audiences, and DoubleClick Bid Manager. StreamLabs uses only DoubleClick. Finally, Muxy does not use any dedicated advertising web technologies.
According to a January 2018 Forbes article, however, ad spending in the video game developer industry reached $37 billion in 2017 with a customer acquisition cost of around $15. Top developers spend 30% of their revenue on advertising.
NUMBER OF VIDEOS AND VIEWERS FOR ONLINE GAMING
Twitch enjoys 9.7 million daily active users. The website TwitchStats lists 200 games, but Twitch has over 2.9 million monthly broadcasters as of 2018. The most popular game, Fortnite, averages 4,895 channels.
According to an industry report by StreamLabs, Twitch saw an increase from 484,243 monthly active streamers in October 2017 to 550,526 in December 2017. YouTube Live Gaming is catching up with 161,140 in October and 197,108 in December. According to a 2017 Q4 report by StreamLabs, YouTube Live Gaming saw a monthly active streamer growth of 343%.
The number of concurrent viewers (the number viewing at the same time) on Twitch grew from 736,700 in 2017 Q3 to 788,000 in 2017 Q4, while the number grew from 281,200 to 308,000 for YouTube.
A 2017 New Yorker article states that 100 million viewers watch their favorite gaming personalities play video games via Twitch.
Ali Moiz, CEO of Streamlabs, has stated that the live streaming industry is extremely healthy with over 600 million monthly active users, 86% of which come through streamers rather than esports. Live streaming is a $3 billion industry that he expects to double within the next two or three years.
CONCLUSION
In conclusion, the top competitors for StreamElements include StreamLabs and Muxy. Ad spend and user acquisition costs are not available for these companies, but in 2017, the online video gaming industry spent $37 billion on advertising. Twitch dominates the online gaming video streaming market, but YouTube Live Gaming is catching up quickly in terms of viewer numbers.