Rooter experiments with gaming Reels to attract advertisers

Rooter, one of India’s leading gaming and esports streaming platforms, recently started experimenting with different types of videos. Users can now also access shorter videos on the platform. 

About 10 months ago, Rooter introduced gaming Reels as a new content category. In a recent interaction with afaqs!, Piyush Kumar, founder and CEO, Rooter, shares that this type of content has added about 25% to the overall time spent on the app.

He says that when the company first started building its audience, it realised that the first 25-30 million people who viewed content on the platform through different sources, were comfortable with streaming content. This is because those viewers are close to the category and are able to consume long forms of content easily.

“But as you move towards larger audiences, the first thing you realise is that you need to give them content in a format that they’re comfortable consuming. They may not necessarily have 30 minutes or an hour to sit down and engage with content. Therefore, they need different content formats that they can consume.”

To grow its audience even more, Rooter has decided to give the streamers, who act as content creators for the platform, the ability to develop different types of content. Kumar explains that now, after a stream ends, the streamed content remains with the creator. 

“Once the streaming is over, the streamed video gets saved on your profile. After that, you can edit that content into one-minute, 15-minute or 20-minute videos.”

The company first started experimenting with shorter videos between October 2021 and March 2022. Then, in May 2022, it decided to experiment with bite-sized content.

“In the first month, the users consumed three Reels per session. Now, what we’ve seen is that they are consuming almost 18 Reels per day, which is quite big. Around 50,000 people create Reels on our platform every month. So, Rooter has now become a promising creator ecosystem.”

Kumar mentions that the average time spent on the platform, has increased from 28 to 36 minutes since the addition of Reels. This has led to an overall advertiser interest in Rooter’s content. 

“Reels are doing well because it’s a native format. It’s exactly the way Instagram or TikTok or any similar platform, displays content. There are ads in between a couple of Reels. With Reels doing well, our revenue has grown by almost 40% over the last two months. We’re, therefore, quite confident that Reels will eventually go on to create a much better engagement.”

Brands like Logitech, TVS, H&M, Prime Video, HP (Omen), McDonald’s, Fitpass, among others, have advertised via Reels on Rooter. The advertisers now have the option of advertising on various forms of content on the platform. 

“Short format videos are doing well. But I think the two content formats that will take it forward in a big way, include live streams and Reels. I expect Reels to continue to grow as a form of monetisable content for Rooter,” Kumar asserts.