Sponsored Influencer Posts Mentioned These Video Game Brands The Most

According to The NPD Group’s latest research, this holiday season US consumer spending on video games will reach $13.4 billion, representing a 24 percent increase year-over-year (YoY). By the end of 2020, annual US consumer spending on video games could exceed $50 billion.

Alongside this holiday boost driven in part by increased spending on gamepads, headsets and subscriptions, video game brands are upping their influencer marketing efforts. 

According to Business Insider, a new analysis from CreatorIQ found 2,700 sponsored posts from 870 influencers on Instagram and YouTube that featured video game companies during September.

To identify sponsored influencer posts featuring video game companies, CreatorIQ sorted through hashtags like #sponsored, #ad and #partner, then pinpointed posts that tagged a video game brand or platform.

Appearing in 426 sponsored posts from 131 creators, Twitch was the most marketed gaming platform among influencers.

PlayStation came in second, appearing in 423 sponsored posts from 116 creators.

Rounding out the top five brands most mentioned by influencers in September were Nintendo, Nvidia and Xbox.

According to CreatorIQ, Nintendo saw 361 sponsored posts from 97 creators. Nvidia appeared in 245 sponsored posts from 49 creators. Xbox appeared in 238 sponsored posts from 87 influencers.

The video game brands in the latter half of the top 10 list were PUBG Corporation, Steam, Tencent and Supercell.

Today, there are about 244 million video game players in the US, nearly 30 million more than in 2018, according to The NPD Group. And in 2020, the average gamer spends about 14 hours per week playing video games compared to 12 hours in 2018.

Just as the video game industry has grown, so has the influencer ecosystem. New data from SignalFire found that there are now 50 million content creators on YouTube, Instagram, Twitch, TikTok and other social media platforms, as reported by Forbes.

There are about 46.7 million amateur creators versus 2 million professional creators. YouTube boasts the most amount of professional influencers (1 million) followed by Instagram (500,000) then Twitch (300,000). At 30 million, Instagram has the most number of amateur influencers, followed by YouTube (12 million) and Twitch (2.7 million).

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