• by Alex Weprin , October 10, 2018

SuperData, the Nielsen-owned measurement company that focuses on gaming, Esports and virtual reality, is launching a new tool that seeks to value games, teams, channels and influencers in the gaming video and Esports space.

The SuperData Arena tool looks at a number of metrics across platforms like Twitch and YouTube, including the number of hours streamed and watched, channel followers, and concurrent viewers.

Joost van Dreunen, cofounder of SuperData, says the tool is designed to present “a holistic view of how players and fans are consuming and engaging with streaming content across the world’s most popular channels and platforms.”

The tool is meant to help marketers, publishers and brands navigate the increasingly popular but still nascent esports and gaming video content business.

With an audience that skews heavily young and male, there is significant interest in the space from brands. However, with so many teams, leagues, games and online influencers in the market, there has been a need for professionalization, both on the part of content creators and in terms of measurement. 

SuperData’s work in the gaming space spurred on its acquisition by Nielsen, which closed in September.

In the case of SuperData Arena, the company says it hopes “to better inform [advertiser] sponsorship decisions” by tracking “video games content retention, engagement, magnitude and overall value to determine the best sponsorship ROI.”

While gaming content is often lumped together, the market has a number of different types of programming. Live Esports tournaments are among the most high-profile, but there is also viewership of live streams on platforms like Twitch, and on-demand gaming content on platforms like YouTube.

For brands, these different forms of content present different opportunities. Esports offers sponsorships comparable to traditional sporting events, while live streams and on-demand content offer pre- and mid-roll ad opportunities, as well as brand integration with the gamers themselves (i.e. by wearing branded clothing, or drinking sponsored beverages on-camera).

For publishers, being able to value their IP and the gamers that are streaming it can provide an added layer of data when it comes to their own branding deals.

The ability to gauge the popularity of different games, as well as individual channels and influencers, can provide more transparency to marketers that may have been reticent to shift their marketing budgets to the space.