Kick Ads Opens the 100 Million User Platform to Advertisers for the First Time

Kick Ads has launched, opening the livestreaming platform to brands and advertisers for the first time since Kick started in 2022. The company spent three and a half years building for creators and viewers before selling anything to marketers, and now counts more than 100 million active users and 1.5 billion hours watched in the second quarter of 2026.

“Brands and advertisers, our DMs are open,” the company said in a statement posted to LinkedIn. The pitch leans on a concentrated young audience rather than raw scale, with 81.7 percent of viewers aged between 18 and 34.

The Numbers Kick Is Selling

The platform’s case to advertisers rests on a handful of figures, most of them about attention rather than reach.

Kick ranks as the number one streaming platform in the Middle East, North Africa and Latin America, with growth continuing across Asia, Europe and Australia. Because 66 million of those users arrived in the past eighteen months, the audience Kick is now selling is substantially newer than the platform itself.

Why Kick Waited Three And A Half Years

The delay was deliberate, and the contrast with its main rival is stark. Twitch began rolling out video ads around 2011 and 2012, shortly after launching, with automated mid-rolls and expanded ad incentive programmes following between 2018 and 2020. Kick went the other way, carrying the cost of an unmonetised platform for years in order to arrive with an audience already in place.

“The viewer is everything on KICK. They’re not watching in the background, they’re in the chat, part of the stream,” said Ryan Webb, head of growth and revenue. “We spent more than three years earning that by building a platform creators wanted to stream on and communities wanted to spend time in. That’s what built an audience that sticks around, pays attention, and trusts the platform they’re watching on. Only once we knew we had built something people loved did we open the doors to advertisers.”

Webb said the rollout has been “steady and precise”, with the company assembling advertising staff from Google, Spotify, Omnicom and Seven Network to build the platform and service model. Hiring from established ad businesses rather than promoting internally signals that Kick is selling to agencies on their terms, not asking them to learn a new one.

Read More: Kick CEO Confirms Ads Are Coming, Ending the Platform’s Ad Free Era | How to Get Your 2025 Twitch Recap and See Your Year on the Platform

What People Actually Watch On Kick

Gaming remains the largest single category but no longer the majority of the platform. It accounts for 48 percent of all content, with 37 percent going to talk shows, podcasts and IRL livestreams, and the remainder spread across professional sport, esports tournaments, creator events, television watch parties and news.

Kelly Lenihan, global advertising lead, framed that mix as the product. “For years, marketers have been asking the same question: how do you reach a generation that’s spending less time with traditional media? The answer isn’t another social feed, it’s livestreaming. People don’t just watch KICK, they participate in it.” Lenihan said advertisers are “not simply buying impressions”, describing the offer as participation in communities and conversations, and noted the company is building it “all from our Melbourne HQ while taking on the world”.

The Publisher Deals Behind The Timing

The advertising launch follows a run of distribution agreements that gave Kick premium content to sell against. Riot Games added Kick to its official broadcast roster for League of Legends Esports, VALORANT and Teamfight Tactics a month ago, and ESL FACEIT Group signed a global distribution partnership earlier in 2026, aimed partly at younger audiences in high-growth markets including MENA. Brazilian streamer Alexandre “Gaules” Borba has publicly said Kick’s monetisation terms beat those of Twitch and YouTube.

The Scrutiny Advertisers Will Weigh

The push arrives while the platform is still under pressure over its commercial associations and its moderation. Kick has drawn criticism over its ties to the gambling platform Stake, which sponsors esports organisations including Team Vitality and Astralis. Last year France moved against the platform following the death of a streamer during a broadcast on 18 August, after the streamer had reportedly endured several days of abuse and humiliation livestreamed on Kick.

Those two issues sit directly in the path of the business Kick is now trying to build, because brand safety review is the first stage of any agency buy and both are matters of public record. How quickly the audience scale converts into revenue depends on whether advertisers price that risk as manageable.

Ethan Wright, a director at Kick, said the launch followed an extended internal process. “We’ve had countless iterations, more stakeholder and research studies than I can remember,” he wrote in a separate LinkedIn post, adding that the company is ready to have “real discussions with launch partners”. Kick has pointed interested brands to [email protected], and says it intends to remain creator-first as those conversations begin.