The Ultimate Guide to Marketing Attribution for Gaming Studios
Marketing attribution is essential for game studios, publishers and agencies looking to understand the true impact of their marketing campaigns. With an ever-growing list of advertising channels, platforms, and user behaviours, determining what drives conversions has become more complex and critical than ever. For the actors in PC and Console gaming, mastering attribution means optimising marketing spend, improving player acquisition strategies, and maximising long-term player value.
This comprehensive guide will explore the fundamentals of marketing attribution, common models used in the industry, specific challenges faced by all the actors in the industry, and how solutions like TRACKS can revolutionise how studios measure success and allocate budgets.
What is Marketing Attribution?
Marketing attribution refers to the process of identifying and assigning credit to various touchpoints that contribute to a user’s conversion, such as an install or in-game purchase. It helps marketers understand which ads, channels, and strategies are most effective in driving results.
In the context of gaming, attribution isn’t just about determining which ad led to a download – it’s about understanding the entire player journey, from initial awareness to becoming a loyal, engaged player. This insight allows marketers to better allocate their marketing budget, optimise their campaigns, and improve overall ROI.
Common Marketing Attribution Models
Understanding different attribution models is essential to choosing the best approach for your gaming studio. Here are some commonly used models:
1. Last-Click Attribution
- Description: Credits the last touchpoint before the conversion as the sole driver of the action.
- Pros: Simple and easy to implement.
- Cons: Ignores the influence of earlier touchpoints that contributed to the conversion.
- Relevance for Gaming: Last-click attribution often underestimates the value of early-stage awareness campaigns that play a significant role in influencing players.
2. First-Click Attribution
- Description: Attributes the entire conversion credit to the first touchpoint that initiated the player’s journey.
- Pros: Highlights which channels are most effective at initial engagement.
- Cons: Overlooks the impact of subsequent interactions that may have led to the conversion.
- Relevance for Gaming: While useful for understanding what draws players in, it doesn’t account for the complexity of the full user journey.
3. Linear Attribution
- Description: Distributes credit evenly across all touchpoints in the conversion path.
- Pros: Provides a balanced view of how each interaction contributed.
- Cons: Assumes that all touchpoints are equally influential, which may not be accurate.
- Relevance for Gaming: Suitable for campaigns involving multiple touchpoints across various platforms, but may oversimplify real user behaviour.
4. Time-Decay Attribution
- Description: Assigns more credit to touchpoints closer to the time of conversion.
- Pros: Useful for understanding which recent interactions were most influential.
- Cons: May undervalue crucial early-stage interactions.
- Relevance for Gaming: Effective for tracking retargeting campaigns and time-sensitive promotions.
5. Position-Based (U-Shaped) Attribution
- Description: Gives the most credit to the first and last touchpoints, with the remaining credit distributed among middle interactions.
- Pros: Highlights the importance of both initial engagement and the final conversion step.
- Cons: May still overlook some mid-funnel activities.
- Relevance for Gaming: Good for studios that need to understand both the start and end of a player’s journey, making it a balanced approach.
Why Marketing Attribution is Challenging for Gaming Studios
1. Black Box Game Stores
In the PC & Console gaming industry, players frequently finish their install or purchase actions on separate stores like Xbox, PSN, Steam, or the Epic Games Store. This complicates the attribution process, as traditional tools may fail to link ad interactions to actual game downloads or purchases.
2. Multiple Advertising Channels
Marketers in PC and Console gaming use a mix of advertising channels—social media, influencer marketing, search ads, display ads, and more. Tracking user behaviour across these channels is challenging, leading to potential gaps in understanding which channels are truly contributing to conversions.
3. Multi-Device User Journeys
Gamers often engage with ads and content on one device and complete the download or purchase on another, such as clicking an ad on mobile and downloading on a PC or console. Without an advanced attribution solution, marketers struggle to connect these interactions, missing out on critical data.
4. Data Fragmentation
Marketing data often resides in silos across different platforms, leading to fragmented insights. Without a centralised view, game studios can’t accurately attribute conversions and may end up making decisions based on incomplete information.
How TRACKS Solves Attribution Challenges for Game Studios
With TRACKS Attribution, Second Stage provides a comprehensive, out-of-the-box solution for full-funnel attribution tracking across PC and console games. Our proprietary technology effectively measures cost-per-install (CPI) and return on ad spend (ROAS), while optimising targeting algorithms for high-value in-game segments.
This solution consists of three components, all managed and supported by the Second Stage team.
- Integration of the TRACKS Measurement API: The first step is to integrate the TRACKS Measurement API with your telemetric/logging server. This instance will be deployed to your cloud account. If you don’t already have a cloud server, we’ll help you create one, with full ownership at your end.
- Ad Operations Support: Once attribution tracking is verified, the Second Stage team will assist with media platform integrations. This process requires adherence to specific naming conventions for campaigns, ad groups, and ads to ensure accurate reporting. Additionally, UTM-tagged links must be used. The Second Stage team will provide a naming convention generator sheet tailored to your chosen ad platforms or activations. If you already have a naming convention in place, TRACKS can be adapted to your mapping.
- Postback Setup: With access to your media platforms, TRACKS will create events/pixels for game_opens and activate the platform’s Conversion API to feed back attributed in-game data.
Managed Service Approach:
All aspects of using TRACKS Attribution are configurable and will be tailored during your onboarding call with the Second Stage team. This documentation outlines a standard best-practice approach to building an attribution and BI suite, based on years of expertise in user acquisition, media, BI, tracking, and attribution from the Second Stage team.
Functionality
A proper attribution setup can shine a light into the “black box” of where valuable game purchases, activations or instals are coming from. Once an attribution solution is integrated, whether it’s TRACKS or a third-party solution, the dashboard will display key lower-funnel metrics.
If you’re using TRACKS Attribution, the default dashboard will show install metrics, including Measured, Paid, Organic and Modelled instals. It’s important to note that “instals” refer to the first activation of the game (when the player starts the game for the first time), not purchases.
These install metrics can be further broken down by storefront or platform, such as CPI (Xbox), CPI (Steam), CPI (PS), CPI (Epic), and CPI (Nintendo), assuming the measurement API is provided with the appropriate parameters. Other install metrics we are providing in addition to CPI are eCPI and CR%.
Based on your average unit price, TRACKS can estimate revenue per install and report ROAS (Return on Ad Spend) percentages. This allows you to compare and analyse performance across multiple dimensions, including
In addition to tracking in-game events, web conversions are critical to understanding the user journey. TRACKS can report on web conversions such as Steam, PS, Xbox, Nintendo and Epic storefront button clicks, completing the event funnel for your user acquisition media campaigns.
To enable web conversion tracking, a TRACKS JavaScript snippet wraps your landing page’s storefront button click URLs to ensure that Steam and other storefront UTM analytics capture as many UTM-tagged visits as possible. We recommend avoiding redirect tracking links and instead using a plain landing page URL with UTM tags for seamless integration with media platforms.
Post-view or impression-based tracking in video game marketing across paid media channels adds complexity and can negatively impact the accuracy of data-driven attribution. For top-of-funnel campaigns with awareness objectives, using awareness reports to evaluate performance is preferable. For consideration and conversion-focused campaigns, attribution is based on clicks, as a landing page session triggers the attribution touchpoint.
By combining all components of the user flow with TRACKS Attribution, the standard dashboard allows reporting across the entire funnel, e.g.:
Impression → Click → Web Visit → Web Conversion (button click) → Steam Visit → Steam Activation → Install (Game Open)
Metrics available in TRACKS include
- Media Metrics
- Web Analytics Metrics
- Steamworks metrics
- Attribution Metrics
- Awareness Metrics
In addition, based on your onboarding call and the status of your game release, optional metrics may include
- Steam wishlist and pre-order metrics
- DLC instals and in-game purchases metrics (requires an additional measurement API call)
- Influencer / Streamer Analytics metrics
- Brand Health metrics
Here’s how TRACKS helps overcome common attribution challenges:
1. Multi-Touch Attribution Models
TRACKS provides game studios with advanced multi-touch attribution models that distribute credit across all significant touch points. This ensures that studios can understand the entire player journey, from initial awareness to final conversion, providing a more nuanced picture of what drives player behaviour.
2. Cross-Platform Tracking
TRACKS excels in cross-platform attribution, linking user interactions across mobile, PC, and consoles. This capability ensures that studios can trace a player’s journey across devices, connecting ad interactions to final actions on platforms like Steam or Xbox.
3. Unified Data Integration
TRACKS consolidates data from multiple ad platforms, game stores, and analytics tools into a single, cohesive dashboard. This unified approach eliminates data silos, providing studios with a comprehensive view of their campaigns’ performance and making it easier to allocate budget effectively.
4. Postback Capabilities for Real-Time Optimization
TRACKS’ robust postback capabilities allow studios to send real-time conversion data back to ad networks. This helps improve campaign targeting and ensures ad platforms are optimising delivery based on actual performance data, reducing wasted ad spend and boosting ROI.
5. De-Duplication and Accurate ROI Calculations
TRACKS automatically de-duplicates conversions reported by multiple ad sources, preventing double-counting and ensuring accurate ROI reporting. This feature helps studios avoid the common pitfall of overestimating campaign effectiveness due to duplicate attributions.
Best Practices for Implementing Marketing Attribution with TRACKS
- Adopt Multi-Touch Attribution Early: Implementing a multi-touch attribution model from the beginning helps game studios develop a clear understanding of their marketing funnel and avoid last-click bias.
- Leverage Cross-Platform Insights: Use TRACKS’ cross-platform capabilities to optimise campaigns that target players who switch between devices.
- Regularly Review Attribution Reports: Continually review and analyse data from TRACKS to refine marketing strategies, making adjustments based on what’s driving real value.
- Integrate with Media Platforms for Enhanced Performance: Utilise TRACKS’ postback capabilities to send data back to media platforms and improve campaign performance in real time.
Conclusion: Elevate Your Game Studio’s Marketing with TRACKS
Marketing attribution is a game-changer for studios aiming to optimise their advertising efforts and maximise ROI. By adopting a sophisticated attribution solution like TRACKS, game studios can gain actionable insights, connect user journeys across platforms, and make data-driven decisions that lead to better marketing outcomes.
If your studio is ready to avoid common attribution pitfalls and get the most out of your marketing budget, TRACKS is the comprehensive solution you need to transform your campaigns and drive success in the gaming industry.
Take Your Game Marketing to the Next Level
Contact TRACKS today to learn how we can help you master marketing attribution and optimise your game studio’s advertising strategy.
