Xsolla evaluates and predicts the effectiveness of streamers’ advertising campaigns with 70% accuracy

Influencers are one of the most trending traffic sources. In the gaming industry, streamers are most often turned to. A successful choice of a streamer can increase the audience of the project, raise sales.

But there is a problem. Previously, it was not possible to track the effectiveness of an advertising campaign from an influencer. It is easy to agree on the required number of views or code transitions, but no more.

With the development of analytics tools, the situation has changed. In this article we want to talk about what Xsolla offers in this niche.

Partner Network and extended traffic attribution

The “partner Network” is a bridge between game developers and influencers. The tool helps them find each other, allows developers to work with streamers, and content authors to earn on the KPIs of videos.

The KPI is set by the developer. Developers can pay a certain share from each sale via a referral link or turn to sponsorship, in which they determine the budget and payment terms (for example, such and such an amount with N-number of stream views).

The “Partner Network” also has additional features that can be attributed to unique for the market. We are talking about “Extended Traffic Attribution“.

With the help of mathematical modeling, it allows you to track the increase in social network metrics or even in sales to a specific content author with a minimum of data.

This tool allows you to switch from paying for transitions or registration to a profit-sharing model, even when it is not possible to track the source of users and the passage of users through the funnel.

It can also predict the number of sales immediately prior to the launch of the campaign.

Extended traffic attribution can be used by developers of paid and free games that are promoted on Twitch.

How does Extended Traffic Attribution work

While working on extended traffic attribution for influencers with Twitch, the development team collected statistics of views on games whose sales were tracked through Xsolla.

The data obtained was broken down by such indicators as:

• number of one-time views;
• total number of subscribers;
• cumulative duration of views in hours;
• audience growth after the broadcast and so on.

The collected data was compared with sales statistics for the same period of time. Then the statistics were cleared, excluding events related to:

• external sales;
• jumps in the schedule of attracted sales;
• Twitch Drops Campaigns;
• as well as marketing activities through other channels.

After the exclusion of these events, the connection between the increase in sales and the peaks of views became visible.

Then, using mathematical modeling, an empirical formula describing this relationship was obtained. The resulting equation allows you to calculate sales with a lack or low quality of input data (including future ones, based on previous campaigns). The model also allows developers to analyze the impact of those streamers whose work cannot be evaluated directly.

The model is predictive and gives only an approximate result. At the same time, its accuracy is quite high and is 70%.

Important: The accuracy may vary during promotions, Twitch Drops and other external sales.

What does it mean

Advanced traffic attribution allows developers to:

• to select streamers for partnership, assessing the potential increase in sales;
• it helps to determine the economic efficiency of existing cooperatives.

Pitfalls

It is important to remember: the result of cooperation with streamers is also influenced by other factors, so the calculations provided by the program are preliminary.

Spreading criticism or hatred during the broadcast, content that violates the rules, as well as “cheating” views by bots — all this can damage the brand of the game and have a bad effect on its sales.

To avoid problems in the future, it is worth carefully studying streamers before offering them cooperation within the framework of the extended attribution model.

It is necessary to make sure that the content created by the streamer complies with the principles of the promoted game, check the previous experience of working with sponsors and covering games, as well as study the streamer’s audience.

Additional features for streamers

The extended attribution model helps not only developers, but also streamers. It allows them to earn outside of the traditional streaming schemes.

The principle of its operation is simple: the more effectively the influencer works, the more actively its audience grows, and the larger amounts are accrued by the model for each stream.

Earnings can grow not only by increasing the audience. The developer can increase the percentage of deductions if he decides that the author publishes useful and high-quality content.

Another possibility is the Creator Tag solution developed by Xsolla, which allows content authors to be rewarded for purchases made by their viewers inside the game.

Thanks to him, players can help their favorite streamer by specifying his name while buying goods in the game store. The player gets his product, and the streamer gets a share of its value.

To start using the Creator Tag, the streamer needs to receive an invitation from the developer.

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Now Xsolla continues to work on improving the accuracy of its tools for extended traffic attribution, conducting research on various games and streaming campaigns.

In order to get access to the use of advanced traffic attribution tools and to the Creator Tag solution, the developer needs to register in the “Xsolla Partner Network”.

You can also get answers to your questions by writing to am@xsolla.com .