{"id":2190,"date":"2026-02-24T15:46:22","date_gmt":"2026-02-24T15:46:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.greenmangaming.com/company\/news-category\/uncategorized\/\/"},"modified":"2026-02-24T16:49:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-24T16:49:09","slug":"steam-utm-marketing-attrbition-black-hole","status":"publish","type":"news","link":"https:\/\/www.greenmangaming.com/company\/news-category\/latest-news\/steam-utm-marketing-attrbition-black-hole\/","title":{"rendered":"The Steam Attribution Black Hole: Why 75% of Your Marketing Data (UTM) is Missing\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

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<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She describes it as the “black hole” in Steam UTM marketing tracking. We\u2019ve 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\u2019d have said we\u2019re probably losing 40-50% of our tracked wish lists and purchases to the void, similar to the gaps we see in Google Analytics nowadays.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m not too proud to admit I was wrong. The reality is much, much worse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Bleak Reality: A Real-Life UTM Case Study<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Starting with Google\u2019s 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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The campaign had millions of impressions, a high video view rate and a solid CTR – all great so far.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2019s just didn’t add up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n