Twitch wants to be a “house of brands” that packages streamers (and their communities) for ad sales

Twitch is not profitable, and according to The Information, is “in the crosshairs” of Amazon CEO Andy Jassy, who isn’t pleased that one of the ecommerce giant’s pet projects isn’t making beaucoup bucks.

With that context in mind, two things are happening. First, Amazon has tapped one of its own corporate development executives, Viral Thacker, to head over to Twitch and lead a new ad sales and product group. And, second, Rachel Delphin, Twitch’s Chief Marketing Officer, just told The Drum that the platform’s marketing goal is “not necessarily about driving a direct result” like sales or clicks, and that it would rather establish itself as a “house of brands” that promotes its streamers the same way Netflix promotes its shows.

Both of these things show that Twitch is concerned about growth. On the Thacker side, he’ll reportedly lead a team “across all ad products, countries and customer segments” that will report to Alan Moss, Amazon’s VP of Global Ad Sales. This is a clear injection of Amazon corporate into Twitch’s operations, and further entwines the two entities.

As The Information points out, this merging has been in play since 2020, when Amazon put Twitch’s ad teams under its own umbrella and started keeping a closer eye on the platform’s branding–and spending. Thacker was apparently involved in that umbrellaing, but then shifted away to oversee Amazon’s emerging businesses team, selling ads to startups and small biz.

Now he’s back, right as Amazon has wrapped Twitch into its video ad packages–so advertisers who want space on other offerings like Prime Video, Freevee, and Fire TV also get Twitch tossed in there, too. Amazon is also highlighting Twitch at more events: just this month, it gave the platform space at its annual Unboxed event in Austin, as well as at the U.K. Upfronts; and, in June, it brought Twitch to Cannes Lions.

There’s no info yet about the direction Thacker plans to go with Twitch ads, which brings us to the Delphin side. “The job is creator marketing,” she told The Drum. “We reach viewers when creators are effective. When they’re growing, when they’re inspired, they bring other creators in. Creators bring viewers in. That’s the job in a nutshell.”

She also, interestingly, mentioned that new viewers tend to find Twitch streamers on other platforms, and then come to check out their channels “with high intention” to follow them and engage with their content. It’s cool that viewers are that interested in Twitch’s streamers, but also a pretty stark admission of the platform’s discoverability problem.

Twitch wants to be “kind of like a streaming service that promotes content instead of the brand,” Delphin added. “[W]e’re a bit like a house of brands in that way, so a lot of our focus is on enabling, empowering and informing streamers.”

And if those streamers perform well, they can develop strong communities that want to spend time watching them…which means those viewers will spend time watching video ads.

Delphin argues that’s Twitch’s real secret sauce for marketers: “You get a chance to spend time,” she said. “It’s not necessarily about driving a direct result—click-through or selling a product or sign-ups or whatever. It’s about making an impression on a hard-to-reach demographic, demonstrating values, demonstrating creativity, whatever the pillars of your brand are, doing it in a way that feels very authentic to the brand and leaving an impression on people who have a lot of purchasing power.”

Creator communities are a much-talked-about commodity lately, with YouTube also leaning into the power of fandom and turning its Community tabs into serious fan hubs. We get it: the more devoted fans are, the more they watch content. And, since both YouTube and Twitch now see themselves as competitors for Netflix and other streaming services rather than competition for social media sites like TikTok and Twitter, watch time is precious.

What does this all boil down to for Twitch? Between Thacker’s new team and Delphin’s current marketing approach, we see a platform that’s struggling to impress its corporate owner and keep its creator base satisfied. Whether it can do both remains to be seen.