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A growing number of gaming companies have forged strong bonds with influencers amid their power to generate traffic and acquire quality customers better than other marketing channels. Nearly 40% of consumers trust influencers more than brands. Moreover, brands could earn $5.78 on average for every dollar spent on influencer marketing. 

Although Twitch is the dominant marketing platform for reaching gamers, YouTube is still a force to reckon with. More than 40% of YouTube viewers watch gaming videos, spending some 100 billion hours consuming this type of content.  How would you know who to collaborate with so they can endorse your game to the YouTube community?

Scouting for Gaming Influencers

Finding the right influencers for your game and keeping track of their campaign efforts are vital to YouTube marketing success. However, identifying the right influencer can be challenging amid the sea of YouTubers exposed to a buffet of game titles. There are millions of gaming-focused YouTube channels and over 443,000 streaming channels on YouTube. To identify and connect with influencers relevant to your game, you need influencer search tools to ensure that the personality appeals to your target audience and will hit your ROI targets.

How Search Tools Can Help You Find the Right Match

A marketing campaign's success doesn't just depend on the size of an influencer's follower base. Other factors—such as the demographics of an influencer's channel, their core areas of interest, and engagement levels—come into play.

Using influencer search platforms can refine your selection process by offering the following data:

• Demographics

You want influencers who work within your audience age range, gender, geographic location etc. Online tools can help you check if the demographics of that talent's follower base resemble your target audience.

• Relevance or affinity

These platforms also allow you to refine your search by keywords. You can use keywords for your game’s genre (shooter, RPG, RTS), platform (PC, PlayStation, or mobile), and theme (fantasy or military).

• Performance metrics

Performance measurements feature audience engagement, including the number of followers, likes, views, and comments. Most platforms have fraud detection features that weed out authentic stats from manipulated figures.

• Content quality

You must also view an influencer’s past content to verify their previous collaborations. Doing so can help you review production quality, length, audience feedback, or any work done for your industry rivals. 

• Account activity

The frequency and recentness of an influencer's activity reveal whether they're only casual gamers or avid ones.

• Pricing

You can move on to search for other names in the platform's database if the person's pricing doesn't fit your budget. The information also saves you negotiation time.

Top YouTube Influencer Search Tools

These platforms cater to influencers from various social channels. Their filtering capability allows you to search for YouTube influencers relevant to your game and market:

1. Upfluence

Upfluence is an end-to-end platform offering tools from influencer discovery and relationship management (including an email feature) to performance tracking and automated billing. Founded in 2013, the New York-based company has linked influencers to more than 1,600 clients.

Total # of influencers: over 6 million 

# of gaming influencers: over 200,000 

Demographic stats: age, gender, location

History of influencer's activities: up to 90 days ago

Other SM covered: TikTok, Twitch, Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook, and Twitter

Application for Marketers

Among Upfluence's unique search features is its e-commerce identification, which gives insights into an influencer’s shopping habits. The system can identify YouTube influencers who are among your company's customers.

Meanwhile, you can discover an influencer's genre or game specialization by setting Upfluence's keyword and social platform filters.

Furthermore, the current and previous posts of influencers and the resulting follower engagement show their performance over time, brand mentions, or any past collaboration with competitors.

Upfluence's integrations allow you to import your influencer contacts from Shopify, WooCommerce, Magento, Klaviyo, Gmail, and Refersion.

2. Grin

GRIN is a creator management platform primarily built for direct-to-consumer e-commerce. Its influencer marketing tools enable you to examine a creator's metrics, find "lookalikes" or creators resembling top performers in their niche, and measure influencer engagement.

You can use GRIN to provide influencers with discount codes and affiliate links and integrate its influencer-generated content library with your e-commerce platform

Total # of influencers: over 38 million

Demographic stats: location, language, age, gender, ethnicity, and interests

Other SM covered: TikTok and Instagram 

Application for Marketers

GRIN has recently launched GRINup, the first influencer discovery-as-a-service tool that GRIN customers can sign up for free. After entering information about your preferred creator partner, GRIN suggests up to 50 vetted Instagrammers with verified email addresses for every request.

While GRIN offers options on which influencers to select and how to connect, it lets influencer marketing managers perform the outreach. The platform believes that doing so develops more authentic relationships and better content.

GRIN integrates with Shopify, Salesforce, Magento, and WooCommerce.

3. Neoreach

Neoreach uses comprehensive big data analytics to identify, manage, and conduct real-time performance tracking of influencers. Its competitor spending analysis and comprehensive market data features also allow you to study how other players in your field are doing through data about sponsored influencers, sponsored content, spending patterns, and more.

Total # of influencers: over 5 million

Demographic stats: age, gender, location, interests, language, brand affinities, marital status, parental status, occupation, and income

Other SM covered: TikTok, Huddles (formerly Clash), Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, Snapchat

Application for Marketers

Neoreach's API solution allows you to search YouTube and other social networks depending on your requirements. You can choose from 40 category filters to create your ideal influencer profile. This way, the platform's search engine can return advanced results closest to your expectations.

Depending on your chosen parameters, Neoreach allows you to learn more about influencers through over 400 endpoints, including their social handles or username, audience location, historical growth changes, and network settings. The platform integrates with most enterprise applications.

4. CreatorIQ

CreatorIQ is another enterprise-level tool whose AI-powered Intelligence Cloud offers deep-data analysis for influencer discovery, brand safety, and streamlined workflow. 

The platform also boasts predictive measurement and analysis that can help you scale your influencer marketing programs through its campaign forecast calculator. CreatorIQ, which started operating in 2014, has headquarters in Los Angeles

Total # of influencers: over 15 million

Demographic stats: age, gender, location, and interests 

History of influencer's activities: up to one year

Other SM covered: Twitch, TikTok, Facebook, and all other major social networks

Application for Marketers

CreatorIQ describes its Creator Search feature as "content-first." Through machine learning technology, the platform generates automated recommendations. It could even point you to creators who already have an affinity for your brand. Compare your shortlisted creators and find brand champions using CreatorIQ's historic creator and campaign performance data. 

Moreover, you can build connections with creators you haven’t engaged with before through its Community Discovery and Content Capture. CreatorIQ will automatically spot online mentions of your brand to help you discover and respond to these influencers' content and conversations. You can track brand or product mentions via hashtags, titles, tags, and descriptions.

CreatorIQ can import data from your existing stack of project management, customer relationship, or eCommerce software.

5. Socialblade

Socialblade was a forerunner in social media analytics when it launched its services in 2008. The platform tracks millions of social channels, but the majority are YouTube accounts (55.5 million creators). 

Total # of influencers: over 23 million

Demographic stats: only channel data

History of influencer's activities: up to one year ago

Other SM covered: Twitch, TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Dailymotion, Trovo, StoryFire, Mixer, and DLive

YouTube was the first social channel where Socialblade first applied its analytics technology. Before it started tracking YouTube stats in 2010, the platform only monitored content on Digg, the social network and news aggregator site that closed in 2011 and was revived by Betaworks a year after.

As a YouTube-certified platform, Socialblade welcomes consultation bookings for YouTube influencers who want to improve their channel's performance.

Application for Marketers

Users can search for the top YouTube channels and sort accounts by influencer rank or score, genre, subscriber count, and video views. Moreover, you can find top gaming accounts by going to "YouTube Top Categories" under "Top Lists" on Socialblade's menu. This tab features other YouTube lists, including the latest top 50, 100, and 500 channels. Socialblade also has "Top 250" lists featuring the most popular YouTube accounts in the U.S., the U.K., Australia, Canada, and Germany.

The platform also has a "YouTube Compare System," which can compare up to three YouTube channels based on estimated daily data points, earnings, and future projections.

6. NoxInfluencer

NoxInfluencer has specialized in YouTube since it entered the influencer marketing scene in 2017. Key Features:

• YouTuber Compare - lets you compare the data (number of total and daily followers, total and daily views, NoxScore, statistical history, performance ranking) of up to 3 channels
• YouTuber Calculator - shows the estimated monthly partner earnings and the estimated sponsorship price per video. Both items use the cost per mile—or the cost advertisers pay for every 1,000 ad impressions on a web page—as the basis for their values. The page also posts daily and yearly earnings 
• Top YouTuber List - lists the top 100 most subscribed YouTubers. You will also find average views, monthly views, growth, and the number of unsubscribed viewers on this webpage.
• Most Viewed Videos - posts the most YouTube videos that had the largest number of views in the past 24 hours.

Total # of influencers: 30 million

# of gaming influencers: 10,000

Demographic stats: age, gender, location

History of influencer's activities: up to 30 days ago

Other SM covered: Twitch, TikTok, and Instagram

Application for Marketers

Like Socialblade, NoxInfluencer has a "Top List" link, which includes gaming under "YouTube Top Categories." Clicking this category will take you to a page that shows the top 100 subscribed gaming YouTubers.

You may also find gaming influencers by choosing the "YouTube Keywords Tool" from the platform's "Channel Tools" tab on the navigation bar. Once you land on the keyword page, head to the search field in the upper right corner. Then type keywords or phrases that are relevant to your brand or game. The results generated by the platform will show each channel's number of views, engagement rate, views, and sponsorship price. Moreover, 15 filters are available to refine your searches, including the date of their last promotion or most recent live session, live income, and engagement rate.

Other Ways to Find Gaming Influencers on YouTube

Here are some other ways to find the right talent to promote your game besides using an influencer search tool:

• YouTube Search

In YouTube's search field, enter "your genre or industry" + "influencer" or "expert/s." Since most influencers use hashtags in their video descriptions and titles, try including hashtags in your search. In particular, #sponsored, #ad, or #paidpromotion can point you directly to influencers who have worked with gaming brands.

• Google Search

Enter "your game genre (FPS, RTS, or RPG)" + "YouTuber" in the search. Then check out the names or articles citing names that appear on the SERP—they're likely the personalities that the gaming community is currently following. You can also go to Google's "Video" tab before keying in "your genre" + "YouTuber" and find relevant influencers.

• Check out your past or current influencer's network

Reach out to influencers you're working with now or with whom you had projects in the past to find out about others in their sphere who may want to collaborate with you.

• Partner with an agency to find a good match for your product or company

Are you scouting for an influencer for your new game or marketing campaign? Cloutboost can help. We are gaming experts and have access to thousands of gaming influencers on YouTube. Contact us today so we can help you jumpstart your influencer discovery journey.