For a long time, live streaming was only really used in a not-so-mainstream way to watch sports online. In recent years, though, it’s risen to prominence in gaming circles, empowering personalities to live stream gaming sessions with fellow gamers around the world. Platforms like Twitch and later YouTube have made live streaming in gaming incredibly accessible.
In 2020, video calls, video streaming, and live streaming picked up tremendously for obvious reasons, but it’s live streaming that looks to have been given the most significant boost. Once a niche, the live streaming market is now set to grow at nearly 30 percent CAGR through to 2030, hitting a market size of over $530 billion.
A live stream offers the most engaging way for people to connect to others over the internet, and for brands, it means that you can get real-time feedback as well as directly converse with the audience in the moment. Not only can it boost the social profile of any customer-facing business, but it can also increase conversion rates. Of course, it isn’t a one-size-fits-all tech or approach, so here are some of the ways that top brands are leveraging the tech to appeal to a grand audience of internet surfers.
Expert-driven professional experiences
It used to be that people would flock to cities to open up a world of opportunities, as it was in cities where all of the top professionals, talents, and experts would congregate. Not anymore. Now, these highly sought-after, personable pros are setting up experiences that are both more convenient and tailored to them and convenient for anyone who wishes to partake via their couch or office at home.
Online experiences went from a 2020 necessity to an ongoing offering from one of the biggest companies in the world, Virgin. Through their online experiences listings, you or a group of people can partake in interior design courses, drink tastings, meal cooking, workout programs, and even cake decorating courses. It’s not just Virgin, though, who have delivered pros to the small screens, with MasterClass having put on live instructor shows with Simone Biles, Dan Brown, Neil deGrasse Tyson, and Anna Wintour.
Making live streams more than a viewing experience
Most of the recent live-streamed applications offer a level of interactivity. With online experiences, you have input, can converse, and even buy products within the stream. Another application takes the technology a step further, by making the entertainment product playable in real time as if users were there in the studio with the professionals managing the game. As proven by the sheer player counts in each live room, live casino gaming has transformed the entertainment medium.
Now, rather than being somewhat passive, players see the events unfold in real time, place bets on outcomes before rounds, and chat with the dealer. Games range from Live Lounge Blackjack and Live Football Roulette to Live The Greatest Cards Show and Live Lucky 7. While its life-sized game is a form of live show for Monopoly, it too has its own live casino games to spin.
Can you escape a room that you’re not even in?
There’s no doubt that one of the booming entertainment night-out themes right now is the escape room. They’ve popped up in major cities everywhere, challenging teams of people to find clues and get out of a room in a limited window. At Fizzbox, one of the experiences for online groups is now the virtual escape room. Weirdly, even though you’re not in a room from which you need to escape, the formula works well.
You get one hour and split up into teams. Then, the host of the virtual escape room and gamemaster will tell everyone how to play and then split you up further into breakout rooms. Whether you’re in the Atlantean Chest or Riddle of the Dragon game, it’ll task you with working as a team to solve puzzles, find clues, and use items around your house to break out of the virtual room first.
Soon, you might be doing all of your shopping live
There’s undoubtedly a disconnect between the clothes shopping experience in-person and online. For websites, the bounce rate can be very high because it’s so easy to just tap away from a page. Live shopping is seemingly changing this. With live events put on by brands like Nordstrom and Aldo, people can tune in to discuss products with hosts, ask them specific questions about products – just as they would test in a store – and then buy there and then while in the live stream. It’s immersive and even quite exciting, has already spread in China like wildfire and could soon hit western markets in a big way.
Live streaming is being utilized in ways that almost seem futuristic or sci-fi right now, and it likely won’t be long before even more brands and businesses are making use of the tech to further their appeal.
