What is the difference between hours watched and impressions?

An impression counts one exposure. Hours watched counts duration. A viewer who stays for three hours of a sponsored stream generates three hours watched and was exposed to the brand throughout; compressing that into one impression discards most of what was bought.

What is a good CPM for a streamer sponsorship?

There is no universal figure, because CPM varies by category, region and creator tier. The useful approach is to set the CPM you would accept based on what the outcome is worth to you, then shortlist creators whose price lands under it once realistic delivery is estimated.

Are average or peak concurrent viewers the right number?

Average, in almost every case. Peak describes the single best instant of a stream; average describes what the brand was actually in front of for the duration. A quote built on peak and delivery measured on average is the most common source of disappointment.

Reference · 6 min read

Live streaming advertising glossary

Every term you will meet in a streaming campaign brief or report, defined plainly — from ACV and airtime to media value and share of voice.

An open notebook of handwritten notes on a desk with a keyboard and headphones

Streaming briefs and campaign reports use a vocabulary borrowed from three different places — broadcast, digital media buying and the platforms themselves — and the same word does not always mean the same thing in each. These are the terms you will actually encounter, defined the way they are used in practice.

Audience and delivery

The numbers that describe how many people saw the stream and for how long.

Hours watched · HW: Total viewing time across everyone watching, summed. One hundred viewers for two hours is 200 hours watched. The standard currency of live streaming, because it measures duration of exposure rather than a single impression.
Average concurrent viewers · ACV, average viewers: The mean number of people watching at any instant across a stream — hours watched divided by airtime. The most representative single figure for a session, and the one a sponsorship price should be built from.
Peak concurrent viewers · peak CCV: The highest simultaneous audience a stream reached. Useful for judging one moment, such as a reveal or a giveaway, and misleading as a summary of a whole session.
Airtime: How long a stream ran. On its own it says little, but it is the denominator that converts hours watched into an average, and it is what exposes a long stream with a thin audience.
Followers vs viewers: Followers is a cumulative historical count of everyone who ever subscribed to notifications; viewers is how many are actually present. A channel with 800,000 followers and 2,000 concurrent viewers is a 2,000-viewer channel.
Unique viewers · reach: The number of distinct people who saw any part of a stream, as opposed to the concurrent count at any instant. Always higher than ACV, and the closer analogue to reach in traditional media planning.

Money and value

How exposure is converted into something a marketing team can compare against other spend.

Media value · EMV, earned media value: The estimated cost of buying equivalent exposure through paid advertising. For a live stream it is derived from hours watched and average viewers against a category CPM, which lets a sponsorship be compared like for like against a media buy.
CPM · cost per mille: Cost per thousand. In streaming it is usually cost per thousand hours watched, or per thousand impressions on platform inventory. Because the two are computed differently, a sponsorship CPM and a platform-ad CPM should never be compared directly.
CPA / CPI: Cost per acquisition and cost per install: campaign spend divided by attributed actions. Only meaningful on a stream where there is a trackable route out, such as a chat command or an on-screen QR code.
Rate card: A creator's published prices. Treat with caution: streaming rates vary by category, region, share of stream, exclusivity and usage rights, so a single published figure rarely survives contact with a specific brief.
Usage rights: Permission to reuse campaign footage in your own channels or paid media. A separate licence from the activation fee, and considerably more expensive to add after the clip has proven itself.
Exclusivity: A commitment that a creator will not work with named competitors for a stated period. Priced as the creator's forgone revenue, and it can exceed the activation fee itself.

Formats and placements

What a brand can actually buy inside a stream or a video.

Sponsored stream: A single stream built around a brand, typically combining on-screen banners, spoken product mentions and chat commands. The smallest standard unit of a creator campaign.
Live takeover: Enough creators streaming the same title simultaneously to push it up a platform's category ranking for several hours, so that platform discovery becomes a second distribution channel for the same spend.
Co-watching party: Creators streaming their live reaction to a brand event or broadcast alongside the official feed, reaching audiences who would not have tuned in to the event itself.
Integrated placement: A brand segment inside video-on-demand content that is otherwise about something else — pre-roll, mid-roll or end-roll. Mid-roll is typically watched more, and priced accordingly.
Chat command: A keyword a viewer types in chat that returns a link or a code. One of the few clean attribution routes out of a live stream.
Banner · overlay: A persistent brand graphic in the stream layout. Its value depends on how long it was genuinely on screen, which is not the same as how long it was contracted to be.

Measurement and verification

The signals that confirm what happened to the brand, rather than how big the stream was.

Share of voice · SOV: A brand's measured presence in a category over a period, relative to competitors in the same category. The metric that answers whether a campaign moved you against the market, not only against yourself.
Brand mention detection: Applying voice recognition to stream audio to detect and timestamp every spoken reference to a brand, product or game, with a link to that moment. Converts compliance from assertion into evidence.
Banner exposure: Measurement of when a campaign overlay was genuinely visible on screen, per participant, as distinct from the contracted duration.
Attribution window: The period after an activation during which actions are credited to it. Streams need short windows for chat and QR conversions, and longer ones for video on demand, which keeps earning views for months.
Brand lift: The measured change in awareness, consideration or favourability attributable to a campaign, established through surveying exposed and unexposed groups rather than inferred from delivery figures.
Adjacency: What content sits next to your brand — the creator's other categories, the platform's surrounding inventory, and the chat. The main brand safety variable on live streaming, because none of it is edited.

Where these terms get used

Most of them appear in a campaign report, and how a campaign is measured covers what a good one should contain. The pricing terms show up in negotiation — what a sponsorship costs explains which of them actually move the number.

Questions this raises

What is the difference between hours watched and impressions?: An impression counts one exposure. Hours watched counts duration. A viewer who stays for three hours of a sponsored stream generates three hours watched and was exposed to the brand throughout; compressing that into one impression discards most of what was bought.
What is a good CPM for a streamer sponsorship?: There is no universal figure, because CPM varies by category, region and creator tier. The useful approach is to set the CPM you would accept based on what the outcome is worth to you, then shortlist creators whose price lands under it once realistic delivery is estimated.
Are average or peak concurrent viewers the right number?: Average, in almost every case. Peak describes the single best instant of a stream; average describes what the brand was actually in front of for the duration. A quote built on peak and delivery measured on average is the most common source of disappointment.