Influencer Agency Guides

Gaming Influencer Marketing: Understanding The Benefits

Oct 25, 2024 | By Chris Jacks

When Tyler Blevins (“Ninja”) signed his historic multi-million dollar deal with Twitch in 2020, it made headlines for many in the business and marketing world who had no idea gaming influencers had become so popular.

But that moment was hardly the peak and gaming influencer marketing has continued to grow since then.

Many of the earlier streaming pioneers in gaming are still very active and at the top of the genre. However, the fast growth has made it possible for many new influencers to enter the market and find success with their audiences.

As gaming evolves and attracts an even wider demographic of fans, gaming influencers will continue to be a valuable resource for marketers and brands who want to reach specific audiences.

But interestingly, gaming influencers can have brand partnerships beyond their niche of video games. Due to the widespread appeal of gaming, gaming influencers can be used by marketers who want to target a variety of niches and audiences.

In this guide, we’ll cover the current state of gaming influencer marketing and then list some of the top gaming influencers in the world right now.

What Makes Gaming Influencers Unique?

Every influencer creates some kind of content. Whether it’s videos, photos, or written pieces. That’s how influencers communicate with their audience.

Most influencers focus on short content like one or two-minute videos. This allows them to post content every day to keep their audience engaged and growing.

Some influencers do focus on long-form content, but because of the time it takes to create longer videos, they can’t post as often. 

What’s unique about gaming influencers is that many live stream their gaming sessions which can be hours in length. Since it’s live and requires no editing, they can produce this content almost every day.

The reason this is important is because gaming influencers get the best of both worlds. They can produce and post content every day, but they also create long-form content which generally works well for marketing purposes.

The more time a potential customer invests in a particular piece of content, the more the marketing message within it may resonate with them or carry more weight.

For influencer marketing, this means partnering with gaming influencers can be uniquely beneficial due to how the influencers interact with their audience and the long-form content they produce.

Gaming Influencer Demographics For Marketers

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When it comes to video game content, many people still believe the viewership heavily skews toward young males. But this isn’t true today and about half of gamers are female.

When it specifically comes to gaming influencers and their content, about 60% are young men between the ages of 18-34.

For example, the Twitch platform, which is popular with gaming influencers put out statistics showing their overall demographics for viewership.

Over 3/4 of their audience is under 34 years old across the entire Twitch platform.

Below is the complete breakdown of audience age for Twitch.

  • 16-24: 22.3%
  • 25-34: 49.7%
  • 35-44: 17.5%
  • 45-54: 7.4%
  • 55-64: 1.9%
  • 65+   : 1.3%

While every platform can have its own statistics, the audience breakdown for Twitch matches most other streaming and platforms used by gaming influencers.

It shows that gaming influencers are a highly effective method for reaching younger audiences that are highly engaged with both the content and the influencers themselves.

Due to the nature of gaming streaming and content, it’s common for audiences to spend over an hour a day watching and interacting with their favorite influencers.

For example, the average Twitch user watches about 95 minutes of streaming content per day from their favorite influencers.

This is much longer than typical influencer interactions on platforms such as Instagram or TikTok where interactions can be only a few minutes. With Instagram influencer marketing, the total exposure can sometimes be just a few seconds if it’s only a photo.

Different Types Of Gaming Influencers

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Gaming influencers can fall into different categories and this can greatly impact the type of audience they have. It’s important for brands and marketers to understand these differences so they can match the influencer with the type of customer they want to reach.

Below, we’ll cover the most common types of gaming influencers. Just be aware that within each category, influencers can vary their content and style which causes overlap with other adjacent categories.

The Professional Gamer

Within esports, there are professional gamers who compete at national and international tournaments throughout seasons, much like any other professional sport.

Many of these professional gamers also stream content to their fans. This can be content of them practicing or training or content that offers tips and tricks so audiences can improve their own skills.

Professional gamers generally focus on one game for the majority of their content. This can somewhat limit their content, but they also generally focus on a wildly popular game which helps offset that aspect.

For example, a game such as Fortnite or Counter-Strike which combined has over 500 million users. So despite only focusing on one game, they have a large total audience to draw viewers from.

Esport athletes have notoriously short careers, so it’s common for professional gamers to retire but continue their streaming. When they do so, they generally start to cover a wider range of games and content than during their active pro career.

This means retired pro gamers who stream can grow their audience even larger than when they were actively competing.

Gaming Streamers

This category of gaming influencers are not professional e-sport athletes, although they are generally highly skilled and knowledgeable about the games they play.

Due to their popularity and contacts, they also can have inside information about the gaming industry, which helps to keep audiences engaged and coming back to learn more about the latest trends or releases in gaming.

Gaming streamers tend to focus on entertainment value and interact with their audiences as much as possible. This is done through live chats and even sharing multiplayer gaming experiences with their followers.

This creates a strong sense of community and engagement. In the world of influencer marketing, gaming streamers have some of the closest relationships with their audience.

The level of interaction and engagement far exceeds many other niches and makes these influencers extremely valuable to brands outside of the gaming industry.

Game Reviewers

Game reviewers are similar to other product reviewers within influencer marketing and social media.

These influencers review games and provide commentary about new games and trends in the industry.

Some of these reviewers may not live stream and instead, only produce content for platforms such as YouTube.

Game reviewers work best for brands within the gaming niche since their audiences are mostly interested in specific gaming content and not entertainment value or interaction.

Brands outside of gaming can still partner with game reviewer influencers, but it works best if the brand is adjacent to gaming. For example, tech brands or tech products.

One advantage of game reviewers is that there are many nano and micro-influencers within this category. This allows for a diverse audience type to target within the gaming niche.

Gaming Vloggers

Vloggers represent a blurring of the lines between categories. They are similar to gaming streamers, but they often cover a wide variety of pop culture topics, movies, internet memes, and other areas.

Although gaming is a central part of their content, they can have a much wider audience and appeal due to the different topics they cover.

Because of this wide appeal, Vlogger-style gaming influencers can work with a variety of brands well outside of the gaming niche. This includes clothing brands, supplements, lifestyle products, along with tech brands and subscription services.

Possible Risks When Partnering With Gaming Influencers

Every brand partnership has some level of risk. It’s usually not very high and it’s a normal part of business partnerships as a whole.

With gaming influencers, there are a few specific areas to be aware of that could pose a risk for your brand.

While a small number of brands thrive on controversy, most brands try to avoid such things as it can cloud their messaging and put them into a conversation or narrative they would rather avoid.

Controversial Topics

Due to the type of content that most gaming influencers create, they end up talking a lot.

For example, it’s not unusual for a gaming influencer to live stream 4-6 hours per day. That’s a lot of impromptu talking and every once in a while, they can slip up and say something inappropriate.

In most cases, these are minor incidents and never rise to the level of being a concern.

However, as a brand, you want to do your due diligence when researching possible influencers with whom to partner.

Some gaming influencers have squeaky-clean images while others tend to flirt with more controversial topics or have a history of making controversial comments.

Depending on your brand image and voice, you will want to choose influencers that best match your goals.

One thing to note is that controversy among gaming influencers is very common. If anything, it generally helps propel their growth and create buzz or interest.

So you don’t always need to avoid all controversy with gaming influencers. Just measure and evaluate each influencer on a case-by-case basis.

Thankfully, due to the size of the gaming industry, there’s no shortage of gaming influencers and brands can generally find the type of influencer that match their brand guidelines.

Audience Targeting

Gaming influencers are unique in that they can work with many different brands and still maintain good targeting.

However, you have to pay close attention to the type of gaming influencer you’re choosing and their specific audience.

A professional gamer and a vlogger-style gaming influencer will have completely different audiences, even though they’re within the gaming niche.

The vlogger could promote something as different as an energy drink brand or fashion brand and still deliver strong metrics. A professional gamer may not have the same results and the engagement could be lower when promoting unrelated products.

This is true of all influencer marketing, but you want to be very careful when using gaming influencers to promote brands outside of their niche. It can still deliver great results, but you have to do more research and influencer vetting to ensure the audiences align.

Finding Gaming Influencers

While there’s no shortage of gaming influencers, finding the right one can be difficult. Due to the low barrier of entry and the relative popularity of the niche, new gaming influencers are launching their careers every day.

There are a few tools and techniques that help you quickly narrow down your list to find the best influencers for your brand.

Just remember that once you have your shortlist, you still need to do a careful vetting of each one based on audience demographics, past content, and metrics.

TwitchTracker

TwitchTracker is a platform-specific tool that allows you to search and find influencers on the Twitch streaming service.


Not everyone on Twitch is a gaming influencer, but it heavily skews toward gaming and a majority of users are in the gaming niche.

TwitchTracker also shows you metrics along with streaming schedules for specific influencers you may have an interest in.

Beyond that, you can research trends, which influencers are popular, and other key aspects within the gaming genre. All of this helps you make a more informed choice when searching for a gaming influencer.

Influencer Platforms

There are several gaming influencer platforms you can use to find partnership opportunities. These are generally paid services and they allow you to browse a host of influencers that have relationships with the service.

This can speed up the discovery process since core influencer metrics are already presented when searching through the lists.

These platforms can also help with payments or contracts, although not directly. They generally have standardized workflows so you can hire and pay the influencer through the platform.

For more personalized campaigns or special requests, these platforms can have limitations.

Social Listening Tools

Social listening tools are often used to find influencers of all types and they work just as well for finding gaming influencers.

Tools such as Brandwatch or Hootsuite allow you to monitor conversations and hashtags around specific topics to find influencers that match your criteria.

Prices can vary quite a bit between these tools as they generally have other services and features they can provide. So make sure to research each one to find the social listening tools that best fit your needs and budget.

The more expensive tool isn’t always better, it sometimes just offers additional features that you may or may not need for your campaign.

Who Are The Most Popular Gaming Influencers?

The world of gaming influencers is growing every day and new names are entering the space and carving out a dedicated audience for themselves.

In this section, we’ll cover who some of the most popular gaming influencers are to give you an understanding of the marketplace and how each influencer differs in style and content.

PewDiePie

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No list of top gaming influencers would be complete without veteran PewDiePie being included. Born in Sweden, Felix Arvid Ulf Kjellberg started his YouTube channel over 15 years ago but he started to really take off around 2013.

He found almost immediate success in those early days of YouTube and he quickly became the most popular channel on the entire platform until 2019.

This shows how popular gaming content can be and PewDiePie has reinvented his channel several times. Starting off as pure gaming channel, he delved into pop culture and even early TikTok trends before recently returning to gaming content.

  • PewDiePie Instagram Follower Count: 20 million
  • PewDiePie YouTube Subscriber Count: 110 million

SSSniperWolf

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Born Alia Marie Shelesh, SSSniperWolf started her influencer journey creating reaction videos and short vlogs with a focus on comedy and entertainment.

Around the same time as PewDiePie, she got into gaming and created the SSSniperWolf channel which focused more on gaming content, commentary, and reactions.

She quickly grew her following and in 2017, shifted somewhat away from gaming into more reactionary content from different genres and influencers.

However, she maintained her gaming audience and is still a household name within the industry and influencers in general.

She has had some controversy over the years that led to temporary demonetization on streaming platforms, but she recovered from those incidents and is still one of the most recognized names in gaming content.

  • SSSniperWolf Instagram Follower Count: 5.3 Million
  • SSSniperWolf YouTube Subscriber Count: 34.7 Million

Tfue

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Turner “Tfue” Tenney emerged as one of gaming’s most prominent figures through his exceptional skills and entertaining personality.

Tfue began his gaming and influencer journey as a teenager in Florida, He first gained recognition in the H1Z1 competitive scene before transitioning to other battle royale games.

His biggest breakthrough came with Fortnite, where he quickly established himself as one of the world’s best players.

His success led him to join FaZe Clan in 2018, where he dominated competitive Fortnite, winning multiple tournaments and fueling the growth of his social media account.

Tfue built a massive following on Twitch, YouTube, and Instagram. His stream highlights and competitive matches regularly went viral, helping to mainstream competitive gaming content.

Like many gaming influencers, Tfue’s career was not without controversy or drama. He had a falling out with his former team FaZe Clan and filed a lawsuit against them.

He also was demonetized several times on platforms such as Twitch.

After several of these incidents, he announced his retirement via YouTube, but soon after announced he was returning.

The controversy only seemed to fuel his subscriber growth and build anticipation for his content.

Tfue is an example of a gaming influencer who was a professional esports athlete and used that to help fuel his growth as a gaming influencer.

  • Tfue’s Instagram Follower Count: 4.1 Million
  • Tfue’s YouTube Subscriber Count: 11.8 Million

Ninja

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Tyler Blevens, more commonly known as Ninja, is probably the most widely known gaming influencer outside of the gaming world. His rise was closely tied to the overall rise in streaming platforms like Twitch and Mixer.

His rise also correlated to the explosive growth of Fortnite which became a pop culture sensation soon after launch.

All of these things combined to make Ninja one of the most influential gamers on social media.

A perfect example of this popularity is Ninja’s accomplishment in regard to channel growth. He was the first gaming channel to grow from 1 million to 10 million followers in just 100 days.

Ninja is also an example of the longevity that many gaming influencers have. Despite changing trends and games, the top gaming influencers keep growing and entertaining their audiences.

Ninja has also been relatively controversy-free, at least compared to many other gaming influencers. Other than a few typical contract disputes, he has steered clear of major controversies that could derail his image.

This has helped him remain brand-friendly and made him one of the top-earning gaming influencers in the space.

  • Ninja’s Instagram Follower Count: 12.3 Million
  • Ninja’s YouTube Subscriber Count: 23.8 Million

JGOD

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JGOD is one of the newer crop of gaming influencers. He hasn’t been around nearly as long as many other top influencers, but he quickly created a niche for himself around the popular Call of Duty Warzone game franchise.

Unlike many other influencers on this list, JGOD focuses almost entirely on gameplay, techniques, and reviewing gameplay styles. He doesn’t venture into other forms of content and only covers a few other games during his live streams.

Taking this more technical approach to gaming is similar to a professional esports player, but JGOD is simply a casual fan of the game.

He has used his background in mathematics to create detailed spreadsheets and technical information that his audience can use to fine-tune their gameplay and loadout decisions.

JGOD shows that being an influencer isn’t always about being trendy or trying to go viral through reaction videos or other means. By sticking to his strengths and filling a gap in the market, JGOD has built his million-plus YouTube audience from scratch.

Another unique aspect of JGOD is that he mostly ignores popular platforms such as Instagram where he only has a few thousand followers. 

It shows that gamers can exist on their core platforms without the need to create a complete social media presence on every platform.

  • JGOD’s Instagram Follower Count: 12.9K
  • JGOD’s YouTube Subscriber Count: 1.2 Million

Markiplier

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Markiplier started off creating his own brand of sketch comedy videos. His background in finding humorous ways to interact with audiences helped when he made his transition to gaming content.

Although hardly a professional gamer, his playthroughs of popular scary video games along with his commentary helped him grow his YouTube and other accounts over the years.

Markiplier also focuses on giving back with frequent fundraising campaigns and through his work with charitable organizations.

His reach as an influencer goes far beyond just gaming and he’s also an actor and filmmaker. Recently he started his own podcast.

Markiplier is yet another example of how gaming influencers have strong crossover appeal to many different genres and markets.

  • Markiplier’s Instagram Follower Count: 12.1 Million
  • Markiplier’s YouTube Subscriber Count: 37 Million

NoisyButters

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NoisyButters is another recent entry into the gaming influencer marketplace. Similar to JGOD, she focuses mostly on the Call of Duty franchise and features live gameplay. She occasionally plays other rhythm games during her live streams, but Call of Duty and the release of Warzone is what really propelled her influencer career.

Her style is very positive and casual yet she stays focused on gaming content and doesn’t venture off into reactions or entertainment style videos like many other influencers.

Her playstyle gained her a strong following that has led to partnerships with major brands such as Intel and Best Buy. She also was a member of FaZe Clan for a period of time.

  • NoisyButters Instagram Follower Count: 219K
  • NoisyButters YouTube Subscriber Count: 1.2 Million

Deciding Which Gaming Influencers To Partner With

We covered some of the most popular influencers in gaming, but there are thousands more, each with dedicated audiences that can be a great match for virtually any brand.

To help you find the right gaming influencers, we’ve created a checklist outlining the steps to take during the process.

Ensure Audience Alignment

  • Match the influencer’s core audience demographics with your target market
  • Consider factors like age range, geographic location, and gaming preferences
  • Look at previous partnerships that indicate products and brands that worked well with the influencer

Content Focus

  • Review their regular content style and game genres they cover
  • Ensure their typical content meshes well with your brand’s values and products
  • Research any controversy or topics covered by the influencer that may be disqualifying for your brand.

Measure Engagement Metrics

  • Look beyond follower count to engagement rates (likes, comments, shares)
  • Check if their audience actively participates in discussions and responds to recommendations
  • Look into how many contests the influence runs or whether they have UGC participation from their audience (gaming clips, etc.)

Past Partnership Performance

  • Review their previous brand collaborations and sponsored content quality
  • Ask for case studies or performance metrics from past gaming-related partnerships

Platform Expertise

  • Identify which platforms (Twitch, YouTube, TikTok) they excel on
  • Consider if their primary platform aligns with where your target audience spends time
  • If they’re on multiple platforms, ask how cross-promotion across those platforms

Authenticity

  • Assess if they would genuinely use products or services similar to yours
  • Focus on influencers who maintain authentic relationships with their community rather than just pushing unrelated products

Communication Style

  • Evaluate their ability to explain complex features or benefits clearly (if necessary for your influencer marketing campaign type)
  • Consider if their personality and presentation style matches your brand voice

Content Schedule

  • Check their posting consistency and streaming schedule
  • Ensure they can maintain regular engagement with their audience
  • Decide if you want to be mentioned in a live stream or other content options
  • Ask about lead times or other scheduling information

Competitive Analysis

  • Review if they’ve recently worked with competing brands
  • Consider exclusivity requirements or NDAs if necessary for your campaign

Budget

  • Check if their rates align with your influencer marketing budget
  • Consider the potential ROI based on their typical partnership performance

The Future Of Gaming Influencers

As gaming continues to grow and expand its demographic base, gaming influencers should continue their explosive growth and impact on audiences in a multitude of genres.

As a brand, it’s important to understand this growing space and how partnering with the right gaming influencers can help you reach highly engaged audiences across virtually every social media platform and live streaming service.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Chris Jacks is an influencer marketing professional with over a decade of experience in the digital marketing sphere. As the Director of Growth Strategy, Chris oversees and drives strategic initiatives to fuel business expansion. With a keen eye for market trends and opportunities, Chris develops comprehensive growth plans and aligns business objectives across cross-functional teams. With a strong focus on crafting impactful, ROI-driven influencer campaigns across multiple sectors, Chris utilizes his expertise to enhance market positioning and maximize results.

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