Under the terms of the agreement, TiVo's linear TV viewership data-which includes more than two million households-will now be available in Tru Optik's OTT Marketing Cloud platform.

Last week the rapper Drake logged on to the Amazon-owned videogame streaming site Twitch to play "Fortnite" with one of the platform's most-popular gamers, a man named Ninja. The duo drew viewership that many cable channels might well envy, with 628,000 concurrent viewers. The surprise gaming session was also a proof of concept: with viewership heavily focused on hard-to-reach young male consumers, esports is a prime opportunity for content creators and marketers.

Sling has tapped The Martin Agency as agency of record, leading marketing strategy, creative development and production efforts for the streaming service.

It's still early in the game, but the company's potential in the video business is becoming clearer every day. While Netflix is focused on on-demand entertainment content, and Facebook and Snapchat prioritize both slickly produced evergreen and amateur content, Twitter has focused its video ambitions on live, premium video. "Live" is the key word here.