Trust has become the essential foundation of the creator economy. However, this foundation faces a significant threat as viewbotting distorts metrics across major live streaming platforms, according to new research from streaming analytics company Streams Charts. As brands increasingly shift their marketing budgets toward creator partnerships, this crisis of confidence threatens the expansion of live streaming as a viable marketing channel.
Streams Charts has uncovered alarming evidence of viewbotting’s pervasive reach across the live streaming ecosystem. In partnership with the Audiencly agency, their whitepaper reveals that in Q2 2025 alone, Twitch accumulated 30 million hours of fake watch time, while Kick logged nearly 20 million hours.
“Viewbotting doesn’t just waste marketing budgets,” explains Nazar Babenko, Product Manager at Streams Charts and a five-year veteran of the company. “It erodes the trust that underpins the influencer ecosystem. Brands risk making decisions based on fraudulent data, while honest creators get crowded out by those gaming the system.”
Nazar Babenko
The scale of this manipulation is staggering. As Nazar notes, “It’s comparable to the weekly performance of top Netflix series.” This comparison underscores a troubling reality: the volume of fake engagement has reached mainstream media proportions, creating distortions that reverberate throughout the entire creator economy.
Image credit: Streams Charts
The Real Impact on Stakeholders
The consequences of viewbotting extend far beyond simple financial waste, affecting every participant in the livestreaming ecosystem in distinct ways.
For Brands and Agencies – Marketing executives working in the creator economy face particularly difficult challenges when metrics can’t be trusted. Many have advocated internally for budget shifts from traditional channels to creator partnerships, often against skepticism from leadership. When these investments yield questionable results due to inflated metrics, the credibility of entire digital marketing strategies is called into question.
Nazar highlights the special vulnerability of newcomers to the space: “Non-endemic brands testing livestreaming are especially exposed because viewbotting can distort results. Endemic brands know how to work with different creator types, but newcomers risk getting burned before they understand the space.”
This distortion can permanently damage a brand’s willingness to engage with livestreaming, stunting the growth of the entire sector as marketing dollars retreat to more transparent channels.
For Legitimate Creators – Creators who build real communities face a growing disadvantage against those who manipulate their metrics. As viewbotting methods become more sophisticated – using AI and behavioral mimicry to avoid detection – honest creators must either compete on an increasingly uneven playing field or face diminishing opportunities.
The research identifies specific high-risk categories where this problem is most acute. “‘Virtual Casino’ is definitely one of the hotspots,” Nazar reveals. “‘Just Chatting’ and ‘Counter-Strike’ are also major targets because they’re among the most popular categories on Twitch and Kick, both in gaming and IRL (In Real Life) segments.”
When fraudulent metrics infiltrate these high-visibility sectors, they create market distortions that penalize integrity and reward deception. For creators committed to building true communities, this represents an existential threat to their livelihoods.
For Platforms and the Broader Ecosystem – Major live streaming platforms find themselves caught in a complex position. While artificially inflated metrics might temporarily boost perceived platform growth, the long-term consequences undermine the very value proposition they offer to marketers and creators.
“I believe livestreaming will become increasingly central to digital marketing,” Nazar predicts. “YouTube Live is currently the top platform in terms of watch time, followed by TikTok Live, Twitch, and then Kick.”
As these platforms compete for market dominance, their handling of viewbotters will increasingly influence how brands allocate their budgets. Nazar notes that all platforms “have invested heavily in machine learning, manual review, and legal action. But bot operators adapt quickly. The share of suspicious channels is declining, yet the number of confirmed viewbotters remains stable, shifting toward more targeted and harder-to-detect fraud.”
Recognizing the Warning Signs
For creator economy professionals dealing with this complex field, Streams Charts’ research provides guidance on detecting viewbotting. Rather than focusing on simple viewership numbers, Nazar recommends examining behavioral patterns that reveal artificial engagement.
“The first red flag is audience behavior,” he explains. “If a streamer’s audience remains unusually stable throughout the stream, with no natural fluctuations, that’s suspicious.”
Natural audience flow typically shows organic patterns of growth and decline throughout a broadcast. When viewership displays suspiciously stable or perfectly linear growth, it often indicates manipulation.
Image credit: Streams Charts
The second key indicator lies in audience retention patterns. “It’s unrealistic for viewers to watch an entire broadcast from start to finish. Real audiences join and leave over time, so consistent full-length retention is a red flag.”
Chat engagement provides another crucial metric for verification. “If a stream shows 500 viewers, but only three people are chatting, that’s strange,” Nazar explains. While proportions vary by content type and audience size, extreme disparities between viewership and chat activity should raise immediate concerns.
Image credit: Stream Charts
Finally, Nazar highlights the importance of examiningrelationships between metrics: “If viewership is stable, but follower or subscriber growth is low, something’s off. Genuine viewers usually follow or engage with the streamer they’re watching.”
These nuanced signals require more thorough analysis than simply checking peak viewer counts, the metric most commonly emphasized in creator media kits.
Image credit: Streams Charts
Reimagining Valuation: From Viewership to Engagement
Addressing viewbotting requires key changes in how the industry values and compensates creators. Nazar advocates for a shift away from viewer counts toward meaningful engagement metrics.
“Marketers need a multi-layered approach when working with streamers or agencies,” he explains. “They should use advanced analytics, third-party verification, transparent reporting, and focus on engagement instead of vanity metrics.”
This shift challenges longstanding industry practices. “A lot of brands still pay based on average viewership,” Nazar says. “If a streamer averages 500 viewers, brands might spend $500 to $1,000 on them, but that’s not how it should work.”
Instead, Nazar emphasizes that brands should “build campaigns around engagement rather than viewership metrics.” This principle, if widely adopted, would dramatically reduce incentives for viewbotting while rewarding creators who foster genuine community interaction.
“Every streamer is about community,” Nazar emphasizes. “As a brand or agency, you want to work with communities, not individuals who ignore theirs. Building a community is hard, but engagement is what truly matters when working with streamers.”
The Technology Response: Better Analytics and Verification
Streams Charts continues to develop more precise tools to help brands identify genuine engagement. Nazar outlines upcoming enhancements to their analytics capabilities: “In Q4, we’ll expand our demographics data. Currently we provide geographic insights, but soon we’ll include age ranges, occupations, and family status to give brands a clearer picture of who’s actually watching.”
These enhanced demographic insights will help brands understand the real composition of a creator’s audience, making it harder for viewbotters to create convincing fakes that pass verification.
The platform detection situation shows mixed progress. “Viewbotting remains a persistent, evolving threat,” Nazar says. “While the number of suspicious Twitch channels has dropped quarter over quarter, a core group of confirmed botters remains. Detection is improving, but sophisticated actors are harder to eliminate.”
Collective Action for Market Integrity
The pervasive nature of viewbotting, which affects major platforms and popular content categories, means no single stakeholder can solve this problem alone, says Nazar.
Creating a more transparent ecosystem requires coordinated efforts from brands, creators, platforms, and analytics providers working toward shared standards.
When it comes to the most critical insight from Streams Charts’ research, Nazar emphasizes the need for a holistic perspective: “It’s hard to name just one. Viewbotting persists even as detection improves. The financial and reputational risks are real. Some categories and platforms are especially vulnerable. Authenticity and transparency are the only sustainable solutions.”
Dragomir is a Serbian freelance blog writer and translator. He is passionate about covering insightful stories and exploring topics such as influencer marketing, the creator economy, technology, business, and cyber fraud.
Trust has become the essential foundation of the creator economy. However, this foundation faces a significant threat as viewbotting distorts metrics across major live streaming platforms, according to new research from streaming analytics company Streams Charts. As brands increasingly shift their marketing budgets toward creator partnerships, this crisis of confidence threatens the expansion of live streaming as a viable marketing channel.
Streams Charts has uncovered alarming evidence of viewbotting’s pervasive reach across the live streaming ecosystem. In partnership with the Audiencly agency, their whitepaper reveals that in Q2 2025 alone, Twitch accumulated 30 million hours of fake watch time, while Kick logged nearly 20 million hours.
“Viewbotting doesn’t just waste marketing budgets,” explains Nazar Babenko, Product Manager at Streams Charts and a five-year veteran of the company. “It erodes the trust that underpins the influencer ecosystem. Brands risk making decisions based on fraudulent data, while honest creators get crowded out by those gaming the system.”
Nazar Babenko
The scale of this manipulation is staggering. As Nazar notes, “It’s comparable to the weekly performance of top Netflix series.” This comparison underscores a troubling reality: the volume of fake engagement has reached mainstream media proportions, creating distortions that reverberate throughout the entire creator economy.
Image credit: Streams Charts
The Real Impact on Stakeholders
The consequences of viewbotting extend far beyond simple financial waste, affecting every participant in the livestreaming ecosystem in distinct ways.
For Brands and Agencies – Marketing executives working in the creator economy face particularly difficult challenges when metrics can’t be trusted. Many have advocated internally for budget shifts from traditional channels to creator partnerships, often against skepticism from leadership. When these investments yield questionable results due to inflated metrics, the credibility of entire digital marketing strategies is called into question.
Nazar highlights the special vulnerability of newcomers to the space: “Non-endemic brands testing livestreaming are especially exposed because viewbotting can distort results. Endemic brands know how to work with different creator types, but newcomers risk getting burned before they understand the space.”
This distortion can permanently damage a brand’s willingness to engage with livestreaming, stunting the growth of the entire sector as marketing dollars retreat to more transparent channels.
For Legitimate Creators – Creators who build real communities face a growing disadvantage against those who manipulate their metrics. As viewbotting methods become more sophisticated – using AI and behavioral mimicry to avoid detection – honest creators must either compete on an increasingly uneven playing field or face diminishing opportunities.
The research identifies specific high-risk categories where this problem is most acute. “‘Virtual Casino’ is definitely one of the hotspots,” Nazar reveals. “‘Just Chatting’ and ‘Counter-Strike’ are also major targets because they’re among the most popular categories on Twitch and Kick, both in gaming and IRL (In Real Life) segments.”
When fraudulent metrics infiltrate these high-visibility sectors, they create market distortions that penalize integrity and reward deception. For creators committed to building true communities, this represents an existential threat to their livelihoods.
For Platforms and the Broader Ecosystem – Major live streaming platforms find themselves caught in a complex position. While artificially inflated metrics might temporarily boost perceived platform growth, the long-term consequences undermine the very value proposition they offer to marketers and creators.
“I believe livestreaming will become increasingly central to digital marketing,” Nazar predicts. “YouTube Live is currently the top platform in terms of watch time, followed by TikTok Live, Twitch, and then Kick.”
As these platforms compete for market dominance, their handling of viewbotters will increasingly influence how brands allocate their budgets. Nazar notes that all platforms “have invested heavily in machine learning, manual review, and legal action. But bot operators adapt quickly. The share of suspicious channels is declining, yet the number of confirmed viewbotters remains stable, shifting toward more targeted and harder-to-detect fraud.”
Recognizing the Warning Signs
For creator economy professionals dealing with this complex field, Streams Charts’ research provides guidance on detecting viewbotting. Rather than focusing on simple viewership numbers, Nazar recommends examining behavioral patterns that reveal artificial engagement.
“The first red flag is audience behavior,” he explains. “If a streamer’s audience remains unusually stable throughout the stream, with no natural fluctuations, that’s suspicious.”
Natural audience flow typically shows organic patterns of growth and decline throughout a broadcast. When viewership displays suspiciously stable or perfectly linear growth, it often indicates manipulation.
Image credit: Streams Charts
The second key indicator lies in audience retention patterns. “It’s unrealistic for viewers to watch an entire broadcast from start to finish. Real audiences join and leave over time, so consistent full-length retention is a red flag.”
Chat engagement provides another crucial metric for verification. “If a stream shows 500 viewers, but only three people are chatting, that’s strange,” Nazar explains. While proportions vary by content type and audience size, extreme disparities between viewership and chat activity should raise immediate concerns.
Image credit: Stream Charts
Finally, Nazar highlights the importance of examining relationships between metrics: “If viewership is stable, but follower or subscriber growth is low, something’s off. Genuine viewers usually follow or engage with the streamer they’re watching.”
These nuanced signals require more thorough analysis than simply checking peak viewer counts, the metric most commonly emphasized in creator media kits.
Image credit: Streams Charts
Reimagining Valuation: From Viewership to Engagement
Addressing viewbotting requires key changes in how the industry values and compensates creators. Nazar advocates for a shift away from viewer counts toward meaningful engagement metrics.
“Marketers need a multi-layered approach when working with streamers or agencies,” he explains. “They should use advanced analytics, third-party verification, transparent reporting, and focus on engagement instead of vanity metrics.”
This shift challenges longstanding industry practices. “A lot of brands still pay based on average viewership,” Nazar says. “If a streamer averages 500 viewers, brands might spend $500 to $1,000 on them, but that’s not how it should work.”
Instead, Nazar emphasizes that brands should “build campaigns around engagement rather than viewership metrics.” This principle, if widely adopted, would dramatically reduce incentives for viewbotting while rewarding creators who foster genuine community interaction.
“Every streamer is about community,” Nazar emphasizes. “As a brand or agency, you want to work with communities, not individuals who ignore theirs. Building a community is hard, but engagement is what truly matters when working with streamers.”
The Technology Response: Better Analytics and Verification
Streams Charts continues to develop more precise tools to help brands identify genuine engagement. Nazar outlines upcoming enhancements to their analytics capabilities: “In Q4, we’ll expand our demographics data. Currently we provide geographic insights, but soon we’ll include age ranges, occupations, and family status to give brands a clearer picture of who’s actually watching.”
These enhanced demographic insights will help brands understand the real composition of a creator’s audience, making it harder for viewbotters to create convincing fakes that pass verification.
The platform detection situation shows mixed progress. “Viewbotting remains a persistent, evolving threat,” Nazar says. “While the number of suspicious Twitch channels has dropped quarter over quarter, a core group of confirmed botters remains. Detection is improving, but sophisticated actors are harder to eliminate.”
Collective Action for Market Integrity
The pervasive nature of viewbotting, which affects major platforms and popular content categories, means no single stakeholder can solve this problem alone, says Nazar.
Creating a more transparent ecosystem requires coordinated efforts from brands, creators, platforms, and analytics providers working toward shared standards.
When it comes to the most critical insight from Streams Charts’ research, Nazar emphasizes the need for a holistic perspective: “It’s hard to name just one. Viewbotting persists even as detection improves. The financial and reputational risks are real. Some categories and platforms are especially vulnerable. Authenticity and transparency are the only sustainable solutions.”
The full whitepaper is available here.
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