The spirit of Web3 is all about building deep connections between the users and the product, enabling new and exciting reward and participation systems, as many brands look into Web3 to reach the next level of fan and customer loyalty. Azarus is the leading proponent of this approach in streaming, creating a whole new experience for streamers and their viewers thanks to gamified ads.
Ads are the lifeblood of the entertainment industry. As much as we might dislike most of them, without ads we also wouldn’t have any of our favorite YouTubers, Twitch streamers, sports channels and much more. But with Azarus, ads become exciting games that you play to compete for unique prizes from brands that you enjoy.
Azarus integrates with all the most used streaming platforms, including YouTube, Twitch or even TV streaming services. Only here, instead of boring insurance and sleeping pill ads, you see a cool trivia game sponsored by Nike (or whatever fits your bill — imagine you’re a sneakerhead in this scenario).
Not only do you get to show off your knowledge with all the other stream viewers, but you might also get a limited-edition prize from Nike as a physical reward. Or you may receive AZA tokens, which can be exchanged in a rewards store for over 35,000 digital items (mostly, games and game keys for both new and older titles), or even cold hard cash.
The games are fast-paced, lasting only a few seconds, and make you feel connected through a massively multiplayer and interactive experience. It’s like a digital stadium in your living room — a sneak peek into a world of mass VR integration.
Active Participation vs. Passive Viewership
The platform sees itself as modernizing entertainment to the modern age, specifically by using the fact that streams offer way more opportunities for engagement than TV. Interacting with a TV show back in the day required picking up a phone, which might have meant going to a different room. Though this was modernized with the advent of smartphones, streams are already streamlined, as they bring a combined viewership and engagement platform all in one.
Only the most active users will actively join Twitch chats, and for really large general-purpose streams it all becomes noisy. What Azarus is trying to do is to bring order to the chaos, and engage more people who otherwise couldn’t care less about chatting with others. The viewership experience becomes more bi-directional, and all without catering to very specific social urges.
The platform of course shares part of its proceeds with the streamers who integrate it in their channels, which benefits them both monetarily and from a user engagement standpoint.
The platform distributed over $2M in rewards last year, with over 6 million unique players, so the phenomenon seems to be catching on.
Not Just an Average Crypto Platform
Now, while Azarus is a crypto project with its own tokens, this is only a means to an end here, which is different from many other startups that tried to merge blockchain with the “real world” or the wider digital realms.
Blockchain is used for its infrastructure, hosting the AZA tokens which are used for rewards. This gives a global nature to the platform right from the start, allowing anyone in the world to earn from Azarus, even if they live in a country with extremely poor financial infrastructure.
While the tokens are mostly meant to be used for rewards in the Azarus store, they do have a monetary value as well, which is an interesting fringe benefit of tokenizing reward points.
The users don’t need to know anything about blockchain, as it’s all managed directly from the Azarus app and extension. Thus, it offers a neat way for people to gradually ease into the concept, but only if they want to.
Azarus was recently acquired by Animoca Brands, a giant in the Web3 industry, which should give the platform all the resources it needs to scale even further. Already it’s been actively working with brands like Ubisoft and Logitech, which only goes to show even further that publishers and gaming industry brands are looking to reinvigorate their marketing.
Ultimately, Azarus is about creating a useful product for people so that we can improve the experience of watching and interacting with content. The fact that it’s a Web3 project is secondary to this fact.
