Video Ad News: Convergence 2.0: Gaming and Video are more entwined than ever before

Bidstack CEO, James Draper, spoke to Video Ad News’ Tim Cross about the progression of cloud gaming and how it could add a different dimension to gaming all together with interactivity in live stream.

User-generated live streaming has had an exceptionally close relationship with gaming communities for as long as live streaming has existed. Justin.TV, one of the pioneers in live streaming, started out by focusing on ‘lifecasting’ (where users broadcast their everyday lives), but were surprised to discover the video game section was where they saw the explosive growth, as gamers started to stream themselves playing games in real-time.

Justin.TV’s gaming section was spun out into “TwitchTV” in 2011. And three years later the main Justin.TV platform was shut down so the company could focus exclusively on Twitch, which was then acquired by Amazon for $970 million in cash in 2014. It turned out to be a strong strategic move as gaming consistently pulls in huge audiences (often higher than any other category) on UGC platforms like YouTube.

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