Let's talk to Adele Simpson - EVP Performance Marketing at Green Man Gaming about tracking your marketing traffic, wishlists and demo plays on Steam using UTM tracking.
She describes it as the "black hole" in Steam UTM marketing tracking. We’ve all known it exists, but the scale of it is staggering. Most of us operate under the assumption that marketing attribution on Steam is under-reported, but if you asked me a year ago, I’d have said we’re probably losing 40-50% of our tracked wish lists and purchases to the void, similar to the gaps we see in Google Analytics nowadays.
I’m not too proud to admit I was wrong. The reality is much, much worse.
At Green Man Gaming, our performance marketing team recently ran a campaign for a new indie title from a well-loved publisher. We utilized our 1st party data to find audiences who had wishlisted or purchased similar games and used this data behind the ad platform's usual targeting signals to get the most cost effective campaign possible.
Starting with Google’s YouTube to drive top-of-funnel awareness and release trailer views, and Reddit handled the heavy lifting for the direct CTA wishlists via last-click attribution.
The campaign had millions of impressions, a high video view rate and a solid CTR - all great so far.
On paper, the Steam dashboard told us the usual misunder represented stats that most marketeers expect to see. But when we looked at the total lift during the period where no other paid media was active and organic efforts were minimal the math’s just didn't add up.
Because Steam’s UTM data reported 75% fewer wishlists than the campaign actually generated, the initial "data-driven" conclusion would have been that the campaign was good whereas the real cost per wishlist was much more cost effective.
We all understand the technical hurdles I’ve covered this before; Browser limitations, cross device friction and the "halo effect" where a user sees an ad and searches for the game later so doesn’t attribute it to last click metrics.
We also respect that data privacy laws globally have moved away from the "wild west" of 100% accuracy using UTM tracking and now we do unfortunately have a black hole if user decide to decline cookie consents.
But here’s the problem: Inaccurate data leads to bad decisions.
If you put this data in the wrong hands, the ramifications are huge. It leads to publishers choosing the wrong channels, or worse, publishers and businesses choosing to cull their marketing spend entirely because the "numbers don't work."
In an oversaturated storefront like Steam, cutting your marketing because you can't see the full picture isn't the answer. It’s a recipe for invisibility.
This isn’t a one-off scenario. We are seeing this massive attribution gap every single time we direct UTM traffic to Steam. Other industry veterans have started shining a light on this injustice, and it’s time we all acknowledge that 20-30% attribution reporting is the new "normal."
I took a deep dive into the technical "why" behind this last year (you can read my Steam UTM Tracking 101 here but I’ll be updating that very soon to reflect this bleak but vital reality.
Stop trusting the first number you see on your dashboard. Your marketing is likely working four times harder than Steam is willing to admit.