Live-streaming audiences talk about a lot more than games. In 2025, some of the world’s biggest names in media, food, and apparel were generating millions of organic chat mentions on Twitch. There’s a difference, though, between brands that get talked about passively and brands that are actively building a presence. In this article, we picked brands from different industries and dug into their chat mention data, digital ad spend (thanks to data from MediaRadar), and the activations they launched that raised their online profile.
The brands and categories we looked at include…
TL;DR Takeaways by Stream Hatchet:
- The top brands in 2025 at times had over 1M unique chatters mentioning their brand on Twitch
- We focused on three brands in particular that grew their presence on live streaming in 2025: SoundCloud for media brands, Pringles for food brands, and Crocs for apparel brands
- The key to increased presence? More digital adspend, yes, but also more innovative activations with culturally relevant creators and progressive formats
The Most Talked About Brands in 2025
On Twitch in 2025, some of the world’s biggest non-endemic brands were generating serious organic conversation in chat. Marvel led all media brands with 1.7M unique chatters, climbing two spots in the rankings, while Amazon held firm at the top of retail and ecommerce with 1.5M. Coca-Cola dominated beverages at 1.2M, McDonald’s led restaurants at 1.1M, and Gucci held its ground as the top apparel brand at 434K. These aren’t brands running gaming-first strategies necessarily, but they’re just so woven into everyday culture that Twitch chat continuously brings them up.
So what does it look like when brands lean into that attention? We picked three industries – media, food, and apparel – and took a closer look at how SoundCloud, Pringles, and Crocs are showing up on live-streaming: Sponsorships, creator partnerships, digital ad spend, and activations that moved the needle (Note that for the following analyses we focused on chat mentions more than unique chatters).
Media Brands Synergize Well with Live Streaming
Media brands are pulling in some eye-catching numbers on Twitch. Spotify leads the category with 14.7M chat mentions in 2025, up 14% YoY, while Marvel sits just behind at 9.0M, a massive 95% jump from the year before. Disney, Netflix, and SoundCloud round out the Top 5, with 3.5M, 2.4M, and 1.4M mentions respectively. Marvel’s surge is pretty easy to explain: Marvel Rivals launched in December 2024 and immediately became one of Twitch’s most-watched games in early 2025, dragging the Marvel brand name into millions of conversations along the way.
SoundCloud’s +1.5% growth stands out when most of the category is trending downward. Spotify’s dominance reflects how deeply embedded the platform is in online culture, but Disney, Netflix, and nearly everyone else in the Top 10 posted YoY declines. SoundCloud is quietly holding its ground while bigger names slip, which raises a natural question: What is SoundCloud doing to stay relevant with live-streaming audiences?
SoundCloud Has Built Good Faith with Twitch Audiences
SoundCloud’s Twitch footprint has grown consistently over the past three years, with unique chatters reaching 201K in 2025, up from 176K in 2023. The ad spend data backs up that commitment: Total digital spend hit $8.9M in 2025, up 55% YoY, while online video spend jumped a striking 442% to $724K. But beyond pure adspend, SoundCloud has consistently been running “good guy” activations to bolster their image as a creator-first platform for music streaming.
Here’s how they’ve been doing it:
- “First on SoundCloud”: SoundCloud’s artist accelerator programme spotlights emerging talent through original campaigns spanning music, video, and out-of-home advertising. The most recent confirmed class was announced in 2023 in partnership with Sony’s Audio Team, featuring five artists including wolfacejoeyy and Nitepunk, each receiving a six-month career development roadmap and Sony product support.
- SoundCloud x Twitch: Launched in response to artists struggling during the pandemic, SoundCloud partnered with Twitch to fast-track eligible artists to Twitch Affiliate status (bypassing the usual requirements and unlocking monetisation from day one). The move earned SoundCloud lasting goodwill as a creator-first platform within the live-streaming community.
- TikTok Integration: In May 2025, SoundCloud joined TikTok’s “Add to Music App” feature, letting users save tracks discovered on TikTok directly to their SoundCloud playlists with a single tap. The feature had already driven over a billion track saves across platforms since its 2024 launch.
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For a platform competing against Spotify and Apple Music, these moves lean into discovery, meet audiences where they already are, and position SoundCloud as the creator-first choice for music streaming platforms.
Food Brands Have an Even Spread, But Frontrunners Are Losing Ground
Food brands have carved out a surprisingly consistent presence on Twitch, with the Top 10 spread across a relatively tight range from Oreo’s 840K chat mentions down to Skittles’ 344K. But 2025 wasn’t a great year for the category’s biggest names: Oreo dropped 13.8% YoY to 840K mentions, Nutella fell 7.7% to 791K, and Doritos took the hardest hit, sliding 18.2% to 701K. The brands that have historically owned food conversations on Twitch are collectively losing ground.
While every other brand in the Top 5 finished 2025 in the red, Pringles grew 18.2% YoY to 500K chat mentions, making it the only brand near the top of the chart actually gaining momentum. That kind of counter-trend growth doesn’t happen by accident, as we’ll show you in a moment.
Pringles Pops Off One Innovative Activation After Another
Pringles put $17.1M into digital advertising in 2025, an 81% increase YoY, with $3.5M of that going toward online video. That means roughly 20 cents of every digital adspend dollar went to online video: Notable for a snack brand that has consistently leaned into video-first gaming activations. As a result, Twitch chat mentions jumped to 500K in 2025 from 423K chat mentions the year before.
Though Pringles has launched MANY gaming and streaming-centric activations over the past several years, we’re focusing on just three examples here to give you a taste:
- Hunger Hammer Headset: Pringles built a novelty chip-dispensing gaming headset that fed Pringles directly into the wearer’s mouth hands-free, then partnered with Twitch streamers like Criken to live-test it during Gears 5 streams. Absurd enough to go viral, specific enough to land with gamers.
- West of Dead X Pringles: Pringles worked with Raw Fury and Xbox to break a zombie named Frank out of West of Dead live on Twitch, triggered by the pop of a Pringles can. Frank then toured European streamers for two weeks before returning to the game as a permanent, Pringles-eating NPC.
- Pass the Pringles: Pringles’ newest brand platform, rolling out across 14 European markets in early 2026, is built around the idea that sharing a tube of Pringles is its own little social moment. Gaming communities are a key target, with influencer activations and TikTok missions running alongside the main campaign.
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Pringles’ strategy has been to embrace the absurdity of modern internet culture and align itself with it: Essential for updating the image of the brand from its mustachioed, bow-tied origins. As a result, Pringles continues to gain online cred while other historical “gaming-food” staples like Doritos backslid in 2025.
Apparel Brands Are a Mixed Bag on Twitch, But Crocs Found Its Footing
Apparel brands show a much wider spread on Twitch than food brands, with Gucci sitting way out in front at 1.8M chat mentions (more than double Nike’s 700K in second place). Beyond live-streaming, apparel brands have also been building presence through interactive platforms like Roblox, combining both strategies to reach younger audiences. Most of the category’s biggest names had a rough 2025 though: Nike dropped 24.6% YoY, Adidas slid 15.7%, and Puma took the hardest hit, falling 27.1% to 248K mentions. For the established sportswear giants especially, live-streaming audiences seem to be tuning them out.
Among success stories, however, Crocs grew 14.7% YoY to 647K chat mentions, making it the 4th most-mentioned apparel brand on Twitch in 2025, sitting just 53K behind Supreme in third. While brands like Nike and Zara were losing ground, the only brand that outpaced Crocs’ growth rate was Rolex, which surged 55.3% to 469K from a much lower base.
How Crocs Has Grown Its Live-Streaming Presence One Step at a Time
Crocs has been building steadily on Twitch, with chat mentions climbing from 467K in 2023 to 564K in 2024, then jumping to 647K in 2025. Yet unlike SoundCloud and Pringles, Crocs’ total digital spend actually fell in 2025 by 33% to $7.6M. The catch? A shift in digital priorities: Online video adspend grew 387% to $139K, and OTT adspend surged from just $5K in 2024 to a massive $248K. In essence, Crocs pulled back on broader digital spending while going all-in on video and streaming ads, and the chat mention growth suggests that bet is paying off.
Three activations in particular exemplify Crocs’ philosophy towards online marketing:
- Croctober TikTok Stream: Crocs turned its annual Croctober campaign into a 24/7, 31-day TikTok Shop livestream in October 2025, broadcasting non-stop from their SoHo store with exclusive product drops, celebrity guests, and live giveaways. Crocs is already the top footwear brand on TikTok Shop by sales, and this was their biggest live commerce bet yet.
- Crocs X Mafiathon 3: As part of this event, Crocs partnered with Kai Cenat on a limited co-designed Classic Clog to celebrate his month-long Mafiathon 3 subathon on Twitch. The crimson red clog featured custom Jibbitz charms nodding to Kai Cenat’s Streamer University brand and KC monogram, tying the product directly to one of live streaming’s biggest creators.
- Crocs in Microdramas: Just last month (Feb 2026), Crocs became the first footwear brand to launch an original scripted microdrama, partnering with CAA and short-form platform ReelShort to release Charmed to Meet You, a five-part Valentine’s Day romance where two neighbors fall for each other through Jibbitz charms left on their Crocs. This was a bold move into a format still finding its feet in the West, but one that positions Crocs squarely in the future of social storytelling.
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Much like Gucci, Crocs has realized that to be a trendy fashion brand, you need to have trendy marketing activations. Marathon streams and TikTok microdramas are at the cutting edge of online entertainment, and embedding the Crocs brand in these new formats proves that Crocs is culturally savvy.
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SoundCloud, Pringles, and Crocs don’t have a lot in common on the surface. But across three very different industries, the same pattern keeps showing up: The brands gaining ground on live streaming in 2025 are the ones showing up in ways the audience actually respects. Bigger budgets help, but creative and culturally native activations are what’s really moving the needle. A chip-dispensing headset, a TikTok microdrama, a fast-tracked path to Twitch Affiliate status: These are the kind of high-effort activations that make audiences forget they’re looking at a brand campaign.
Gaming and live-streaming communities have finely tuned radar for anything that feels forced or transactional, and the brands that sidestep that cynicism are the ones willing to be creative and specific. Bigger budgets help, but they’re not the whole story. We go a lot deeper with extra examples, tips, and insights in our full Influencer Marketing for Brands Report if you’re interested:
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