Over the last year, our consulting team at Theorist Inc. has seen significantly increased interest (and increased confusion) from clients around livestreaming. The amount of individuals and companies interested in the medium will also undoubtedly increase as YouTube just opened up their livestreaming platform to a lot more channels. Many understand holistically that livestreaming can be a valuable format for reaching viewers, deepening relationships with fans, and driving awareness to their brand, but in practical terms, many don’t know where to begin. In a growing ocean of live features, from Twitter’s live NFL and awards show broadcasts to Facebook’s one-touch live feature, brands are often left with questions about how, when, and why livestreaming works – and (perhaps more importantly) when it doesn’t.
In addition to consulting, we own and operate two popular properties on YouTube: The Game Theorists and The Film Theorists, reaching more than 12 million subscribers. In September 2015, with Amazon’s purchase of Twitch, an emphasis on live features from YouTube, and the impending launch of Facebook and Twitter live features, we started the regular livestreaming format, GTLive, which we host every weekday. The goals of the livestream were to develop a regular way to engage on a personal level with a large audience, as well as to develop an experimental testing ground for optimizing live content on YouTube.
After 14 months of livestreaming 4-5 times per week, we are YouTube’s largest regular livestreaming property with 15,000-50,000 concurrent viewers and 150,000-500,000 total views per stream. While our strategy for developing a live audience is tried and tested on YouTube, we believe most of the principles we work with apply across a number of the platforms brands are most interested in tackling live. To dispel some of the myths about livestreaming and create actionable recommendations for brands looking to explore the format, we’ve compiled answers to the five most commonly asked questions we get about creating live content:
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1. Why Bother To Be Live?
The value proposition of live programming is twofold: You as the brand receive real-time feedback from viewers, and they in-turn receive a viewing experience that’s as organic and unfiltered as possible. If your brand is planning a livestream that’s mostly pre-scripted, it’s difficult to make a case for the program to be streamed as opposed to posted as video on-demand (aka VOD) content. In general, we advise brands that if they’re not prepared to interact on the spot or feel the need to stick strictly to a script, they’re not prepared to be live.
Brands also need to take into account the goal of any livestreaming initiative. Are you aiming for maximum concurrent viewership? Highest engagement numbers? Longest retention time or watch minutes? The programming strategy around each of these goals vary significantly and we find that many brands haven’t considered their goal before diving headlong into a live platform. No single piece of content can achieve all of the objectives above and there is no way to create a metric for success if you don’t know what success looks like for you.
For instance, if your primary goal is engagement, create a streaming format that relies on live audience decision-making. (See Table 1 for more.) If your goal is broadest viewership, focus the stream on an organically trending topic on the platform where the stream is happening.
Table 1: Program based on the primary goal of your livestream. We gathered data from 28 GTLive livestreams: 9 audience-driven/voting streams, 11 narrative-driven streams, and 8 “trendy” streams whose titles used trending keywords on YouTube. Top: Streams that emphasize audience discussion or voting garner high engagement. Middle: Streams that create long-running narratives yield extremely long watch sessions. Bottom: Streams on searchable and trendy topics garner the highest concurrent viewership.
2. How Much Should I Invest In Live Programming?
Production value is a topic of debate in livestreaming, but among our clients and our own properties we notice several factors that are consistently worth an investment – and some that aren’t.
For instance, sound and basic lighting are extremely important. A piece of live content that looks or sounds “dirty” will significantly shorten retention time and artificially reduce viewership. On the other hand, investing too much in set design tends to also be a detriment. In general, audiences view live content in order to feel an authentic connection, but sets with too many colored lights, effects, or “professional” furniture tend to create artificial distance, driving viewer engagement down substantially because the hosts of the stream are viewed as less accessible. Even multi-cam setups, teleprompters, and too many graphical overlays give the sense of an over-produced news talk-show, not a piece of organic, relatable content.
In an analysis of GTLive data across 14 months of regular streaming, we analyzed 15 streams with either low, average, or high production value across a variety of topics and seasonality. In low production streams, audio or lighting was sub-optimal, or we streamed with technology that was significantly more limited than usual. High production streams were filmed on a professional set and involved a fully dressed studio with news-desk, green-screen effects, and/or professional graphics and branding. We found that while both extremes of high and low production value were detrimental to the success of the stream across key metrics, the higher production value streams often performed the worst because they felt the least organic of all scenarios. (See Figure 2 below for more.)
Figure 2: Blue bar = Higher-than-average production value, Orange = Moderate production value (which is optimal), and Gray = Under-produced. Livestreaming production obeys the “Goldilocks principle:” not too little, not too much. Engagement and viewership diminish when the stream is either overly produced or under-produced.
3. How Often Do I Need To Stream?
The brief answer we give many brands is “more often than you think.” Many brands and creators hold livestreams as special event-driven content a few times a year. While these can be effective tentpoles, the greater benefit of livestreaming is cultivating a highly engaged set of super-users who regularly connect with your brand through live content. The only way to develop this culture is through regular live interactions that happen on a reliable schedule.
In an ideal scenario, your brand maintains consistent personalities who appear on the same days every week, at the same time. When executed correctly over the span of weeks and months, this generates the rare digital phenomenon of appointment viewing, where the audience is truly invested in the success of the content and actively anticipates each live event. (See Figure 3.)
Figure 3: The more consistently you stream, the more audiences become accustomed to regularly watching and develop appointment-viewing habits. During months 1-6, we used one Twitter tweet per day to announce the livestream. During months 6-10, we phased out these tweets to see the impact it had on audience cultivation and found that the audience no longer needed reminders to tune in. Months 10-12 utilized the Community feature on YouTube to announce the livestream each day, which did not significantly impact initial viewership. At months 12 and 14 viewership rates continue to rise on average, even though there is no marketing associated with stream other than the link displayed on the channel page 1 hour before the stream begins.
4. How Long Should I Stream?
Different platforms offer different recommendations on stream length, though all generally encourage longer streams to promote “discovery.” While mechanisms for this also vary widely across platforms, in general we emphasize that viewers will often watch for longer than you anticipate, if the content is compelling.
With our own programming, we initially planned 60-minute livestreams based on typical viewership behavior around an hour-long TV show. Through empirical testing on ours and other channels across verticals, we find that livestreams can extend for significantly longer. Our own data suggests that on our properties, 90 minutes is the optimal timeframe before we experience concurrent viewer attrition. Another key point is that the more regularly streams occur, the longer we see creators and brands able to sustain the audience.
Finally, when your brand is assessing streaming audience behavior, it’s also important to pay attention to the sources of viewership, since behavior varies by platform as well as by device. (See Table 2.) For instance, as noted below, the majority of views tend to come from mobile devices, but viewers watching on set-top boxes engage the longest by more than twice as much as mobile users.
Table 2: A Typical Stream – Average watch session and view % by device
5. How Do I Manage A Livestreaming Audience?
Brands and creators sometimes do not understand that live content truly has two goals: 1) Build your audience, and 2) Get your audience to build itself for you.
The first step can be accomplished through smart programming, choosing engaging livestreaming topics, and being consistent. The second step is accomplished through authenticity. We frequently encourage brands to not hide live gaffes, to embrace mistakes during a livestream, and not edit out awkward moments after the fact. This is because statistically, these are opportunities for some of the highest engagement. They also demonstrate that no matter who you are, the personality on the livestream is a relatable person with normal flaws. These moments of vulnerability can be used as another engagement lever.
Direct engagement is also one of the best ways to showcase authenticity. On our properties, we receive 100,000 – 300,000 chat messages per stream and get to read less than 100, but we treat every chat message we are able to read as if it were the only one in the stream. With consistent demonstrations of authenticity, your audience often becomes the best member of your marketing team, evangelizing within their own networks and educating other viewers about stream and personalities. The ideal result is a community that self-sustains and has integrated livestreaming as part of their daily viewing schedule.
While there are many other questions around livestreaming, both from a technical and audience development perspective, these are our most frequently received. We hope that by shedding some light on these questions we can help create environments where live can be a more functional, more impactful part of many brands’ programming strategies in the coming year.
Stephanie Patrick is the co-owner of The Game Theorists, The Film Theorists, and GTLive YouTube channels (combined 12.5 million subscribers). She also heads Theorist Inc., which specializes in audience development, influencer marketing, and digital programming for some of the world’s top tech and entertainment companies. Follow Stephanie at @cordypatrick on Twitter.
