Finding gaming YouTubers for brand deals

Gaming viewers follow games and genres more than gaming as a whole. A strategy audience and a horror let's-play audience share little beyond a controller, so start from the corner your product belongs in.

Let's plays and playthroughs

Long sessions of one game with commentary. Suits chairs, headsets, drinks and games looking for players.

Competitive and esports

Ranked play, match analysis and tips. Suits peripherals where performance matters, such as mice and fast monitors.

Guides and walkthroughs

Boss guides, builds and beginner tips. Viewers arrive with a problem, which suits companion apps and games in the same genre.

Indie and game discovery

Reviews and roundups of smaller games. Suits indie studios and publishers.

Retro and collecting

Old consoles, repairs and restorations. Suits accessories, modding parts and displays. Audiences here often skew older.

Mobile gaming

Tier lists and beginner tips for phone games. Suits other mobile games and controllers.

Cosy and simulation

Farming, life-sim and building games, with a calmer tone. Suits similar games and lifestyle products.

Use the words players use, and put a game or genre in most searches. Replace these with games your buyers play:

• best settings for low end pc
• beginner guide roguelike
• mobile rpg tier list
• relaxing games to play after work
• best gaming headset under 100
• how to start streaming with obs
• retro console restoration
• underrated indie games
• how to reduce input lag
• controller vs mouse and keyboard
• budget gaming monitor review
• handheld gaming pc comparison
• best strategy games on pc
• is it worth playing now

Guide and problem searches return creators who teach, and their viewers are actively playing. A game's title on its own mostly returns trailers and the publisher's channel.

Gaming creators work in two modes. Edited videos are planned and found through search for months. Live streams are long, unscripted and driven by the chat. Many creators do both.

• Integrated read in an edited video. A short segment in the creator's voice at a planned point. The easiest format to brief, check and measure.
• Live mention. A read during a stream, with a link in the chat. It varies with the session, so agree how many mentions and roughly when.
• Sponsored playthrough. For games, the creator plays yours. Let them react honestly; viewers can tell a forced reaction.
• Setup tour or hardware review. Peripherals, chairs and lighting shown in daily use.
• Shorts and clips. Useful as an add-on to a deal rather than the whole of it.

More on each is in YouTube sponsorship formats. For live work, ask for the recording afterwards and judge it on that recording's views, not on how many people were watching at the peak.

• Audience age. Many gaming audiences include under-18s. You can't see a channel's age data, but you can read the signs: the games, the tone of the comments, and whether videos are set as made for kids, which turns comments off. Advertising rules are stricter where children watch, and some products don't belong there at all; see the disclosure rules guide.
• Language and unplanned moments. Watch a full stream recording, not only the highlights. Decide where your brand safety line is before you watch.
• Like-for-like numbers. Edited videos and stream recordings on the same channel get very different views. Look at median views for the format you're buying.
• One game or many. A single-game channel can have a loyal audience, and it rises and falls with that game. Ask what they plan to cover next.
• Sponsor history. Read recent descriptions for competing sponsors, and raise exclusivity early if it matters to you.

How to vet a YouTube creator has the rest of the checklist, for any channel.

Gaming runs on release dates. Look up a few titles in your genre on Google Trends to see how interest moves around launches and big updates, and check the release dates of the big games coming up. If your product isn't a game, a week without a major release gives your sponsorship more room.

Nakodo builds its searches from your website, so a headset brand gets keywords about headsets and settings rather than "gaming" in general, and you can edit them before it searches. Each channel's numbers come from its recent uploads, preferring long-form over Shorts. It flags channels that are mostly Shorts, have comments turned off or have too few comments to judge; a channel with comments off across its videos is worth a closer look at who watches. The method is on how it works.