When The Node acquired Matchmade in 2024, the plan was to rebuild the creator platform into a tool brands could access directly. Rémy Chapot, the French agency’s founder and CEO, changed course quickly. The Matchmade technology stayed inside the agency, and the door to external access closed.

The Node, headquartered in Montpellier, operates in what Rémy describes as the “gaming lifestyle” vertical, a frame designed to reach consumer brands whose target customers spend hours daily with creators on Twitch, YouTube, and TikTok without necessarily identifying as gamers. Since its launch, the agency reports delivering more than 20,000 campaigns and paying out $15 million to creators, working with publishers including Activision Blizzard, Capcom, and Funcom alongside consumer brands such as HelloFresh, Herman Miller, and Opera GX. Over the past year, the team has grown from 14 to 25 staff, now covering markets across France, Germany, the UK, North America, and Latin America.

That growth coincided with a rebrand. Rémy retired the agency’s black-and-red visual identity for a palette of violet, yellow, and white, which he describes as more welcoming to brands that don’t already speak the language of gaming or streaming. The target is not the publishers who already seek out gaming agencies, but the meal kit company, the office furniture brand, and the browser developer whose ideal customer spends hours each week watching live content. The Matchmade decision, and the logic behind it, is the clearest expression of how The Node is building the infrastructure to serve them.

“Advertisers are more and more conscious that comparing a bigger influencer with another one is like comparing peaches to apples,” Rémy says. The shift, in his view, is from buying reach for its own sake toward matching brand to creator based on actual commercial coherence. What that requires, he argues, is intelligence that most third-party platforms cannot reliably provide.

Creator Databases Have a Volume Problem Most Platforms Don’t Advertise

At the time of the Matchmade acquisition, the platform had approximately 17 million YouTube channels indexed. Rémy says that headline figure collapsed when applied to actual campaign requirements. “When you dig, and you look at, ‘Okay, is this YouTube channel coming from one of my target markets or the most targeted markets,’ the answer is no,” he says. “For like 90% of the cases, it’s coming from countries where our clients are not working right now.”

His conclusion is direct: mainstream creator marketing platforms are selling volume that doesn’t correspond to where clients need to spend. “I am convinced that the mainstream SaaS is doomed to death when it comes to the Creator Economy,” he says.

Rather than rebuild Matchmade as a subscription product, The Node integrated its data enrichment into campaign operations and closed off client-facing access. The case against reopening it is partly philosophical and partly commercial. Brands that would otherwise pay a third-party SaaS subscription are instead served by an agency whose pricing already absorbs the intelligence layer. “Working with us, we are super competitive in terms of rates,” Rémy says, “but we also provide these services for free, integrated within the services.” 

On Twitch specifically, the internal system covers inferred audience demographics, bot detection, and benchmark data by game title and product category. Rémy says it is among the most granular Twitch intelligence tools available, built specifically around campaign use cases rather than general discovery.

Twitch Gives Non-Endemic Brands a Month of Presence, Not a Single Ad Read

The agency’s argument to lifestyle clients rests on a specific advantage Rémy says Twitch holds over short-form and static placements: a sponsored Twitch relationship produces four consecutive weeks of brand-adjacent content rather than a single call to action.

The HelloFresh account is his clearest example, a three-year exclusive Twitch relationship spanning France, the Nordics, and the U.S. that The Node runs for the meal kit company. A creator might spend week one placing an order live on stream, week two unboxing fresh ingredients, week three cooking a recipe with the audience watching, and week four closing with a reminder that the discount code is expiring. “Instead of just having a creator saying, ‘Hey guys, I’m sponsored by HelloFresh, please use my code,'” Rémy explains, adding the format shows the actual customer journey across a full month.

To align creator incentives with that model, The Node structures most non-gaming campaigns around a hybrid fee. Creators receive a base payment lower than a standard activation rate, with bonuses that trigger when they clear conversion thresholds. The arrangement gives creators upside for overselling and gives brands a direct line between spend and measurable outcome. 

Rémy says the same commercial scrutiny is now running in both directions. Brands are examining agency cost breakdowns more carefully, line by line. Creators are asking more directly what percentage of revenue from inbound campaign inquiries they generated themselves is being taken by their representation.

A Chat Voting Mechanic Built a Campaign Around Viewer Participation

For game publishers, The Node’s argument goes beyond creator selection and rate negotiation. For the launch of “Blood of Dawnwalker” in France, a title from developer Rebel Wolves published by Bandai Namco, the agency built a live chat voting system that let viewers direct the streamer’s gameplay decisions in real time.

The game’s design, a narrative built around a protagonist split between human and vampire states with branching outcomes depending on time of day and blood level, gave the format an anchor. Custom overlays matching the game’s art direction surfaced on screen whenever the creator chose to open a vote, gathered responses from chat, and displayed the winning choice live. The Node operated the system remotely during each stream. Seven creators were activated across the campaign.

Rémy says chat engagement ran notably above what those same creators produced in standard sponsored streams, and viewer retention held unusually stable across the broadcasts. “The number of viewers throughout the live stream was almost stable,” he notes. “If you compare it to other live streams, you usually have some drops.” Several creators asked after the campaign whether the mechanics could carry over to their regular content. KPIs centered on impressions and live views, both of which Rémy says were met and exceeded, though he acknowledges Steam’s attribution tracking remains limited for measuring downstream conversions.

The graphics and broadcasting software behind the activation are built entirely in-house. Rémy does not plan to bill this as a separate service. “I want clients to come because we have the data, the creators and the concepts,” he says, “and then this is part of it.”

A Disclosed Agency Fee Is Now a Creator Recruitment Tool

The Node publishes its standard agency fee at 20% and breaks out budget allocation in every client pitch. Rémy says the practice, which he frames as uncommon in the market, has become useful on both sides of the business.

“There’s always a line in the cost breakdown where they see exactly what’s going in our pocket,” he says. “I think that will be the industry standard in the coming years.”

New English-speaking creators signing with the agency cite that transparency as a factor in their decision, he notes. The friction he describes is recurring in creator management: agencies collecting commissions on inbound campaign deals the creator sourced independently, without any outreach from the representative. Making the fee structure legible costs margin in the short term, Rémy argues, and builds retention over time.

China and English-Speaking Creators Are the Next Two Moves

Within the next year, Rémy wants the agency’s first direct relationships with Chinese publishers and brands. He frames it as an active target, not a long-range aspiration. Alongside that, he is focused on converting a growing roster of English-speaking creators into the foundation for genuinely global campaigns rather than briefs scoped to France or Europe alone.

The expansion follows a pattern he describes as consistent with how the agency grew domestically: demonstrate results at smaller scale, let client referrals open the next market, invest once the work is validated. “When something is working, you just want to invest even deeper on what’s working to just go bigger,” he says.

His wish for the broader industry is narrower than the agency’s own targets. More transparency on fees, on both the agency and the creator representation sides, is the change he says would matter most. He is honest about what staying the same would mean for The Node’s position.

“If that doesn’t change, that means we still have a very strong edge against those that are not fully playing the game,” Rémy says. “So I should wish for it, or just hope for it to stay like this.”

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