Attribution tracking in game marketing has long been one of the industry’s most complex and debated challenges. With so many touch points across media platforms, storefronts, and devices, understanding where your installs and in-game actions actually come from is far from straightforward. Traditional tracking tools fall short, especially when applied to PC and console games where the user journey isn’t easily contained within mobile app environments or cleanly trackable SDKs. This is exactly where TRACKS Attribution comes in—an attribution solution purpose-built for the reality of PC and console marketing.

TRACKS Attribution is a full-funnel measurement framework designed to capture every meaningful step between awareness and conversion. Whether the conversion is a game install, a storefront visit, or a web engagement, TRACKS is engineered to give game publishers the clearest possible picture of where their growth is coming from. From launch campaigns to ongoing user acquisition, TRACKS offers a scalable solution to track, analyse, and optimize performance based on real data, not guesswork.

At the heart of TRACKS Attribution is a hybrid methodology that combines measured attribution—collected through server-side integrations of our TRACKS Measurement API—with modelled attribution using Markov chain modelling and Marketing Mix Modelling (MMM). This unified measurement approach, known as Unified Marketing Measurement (UMM), ensures maximum attribution accuracy while compensating for data that would otherwise be lost in platform silos or due to privacy constraints. The result is a system that captures both the directly measurable installs and the broader, modelled impact of campaigns across channels and platforms.

Unlike attribution systems built for mobile, TRACKS is optimised for PC and console ecosystems, where installs are typically defined as game activations—not app downloads—and where user journeys often involve multiple steps across websites, videos, and storefronts. Once integrated, TRACKS provides install tracking down to the platform level, reporting across storefronts like Steam, Epic, Xbox, PlayStation, and Nintendo. You’ll see not only cost-per-install (CPI) but also metrics like effective CPI (eCPI), conversion rates (CR%), and Return on Ad Spend (ROAS), all tied directly to the actual performance of your campaigns.

Through TRACKS’ cloud-deployed Measurement API, server-side event data such as game starts is linked to the original media source using IP-based attribution—avoiding the need for in-game SDKs and reducing the risk of client-side errors. For studios without a telemetry backend or for scenarios where deterministic tracking is not feasible, TRACKS offers a modelled attribution setup that uses web analytics (Google Analytics 4), Steam UTM data, and clickstream data to estimate conversion outcomes with remarkable precision.

One of the biggest challenges in attribution for PC and console is the “dark zone” of installs—conversions that happen but cannot be clearly traced back to a source. TRACKS solves this by redistributing untracked conversions through its modelling engine, leveraging historical performance and path analysis. This allows game marketers to see a complete picture of both attributed and unattributed installs, dramatically improving the quality of insights and campaign reporting.

On top of core attribution, TRACKS also supports conversion post backs, connecting install and in-game event data back to media platforms like Meta, Google, TikTok, Reddit, and X (Twitter) through their respective Conversion APIs. This ensures that the platforms’ machine learning models optimize not just for web clicks or video views but for real gameplay events—helping performance campaigns drive better results over time.

TRACKS also supports web-based event tracking through a JavaScript snippet that monitors clicks on storefront buttons across landing pages, accurately linking paid media sessions to downstream actions on platforms like Steam. This is essential for completing the attribution loop in an environment where store platforms don’t always expose granular data to advertisers.

Ultimately, TRACKS Attribution is more than just a data pipeline. It’s a managed measurement service built by experts in game marketing, offering everything from deployment to onboarding and optimisation support. By integrating media analytics, web data, telemetry, and storefront signals, TRACKS provides the most comprehensive attribution tracking solution for video games on the market.

Whether you’re running influencer activations, performance media on Meta or YouTube, or large-scale brand campaigns across gaming networks, TRACKS helps you see what’s working, what’s wasted, and where to optimize. Attribution is no longer a guessing game. With TRACKS, you gain the power to track, model, and act on what actually drives installs and revenue.

Discover how TRACKS can give you the clarity to scale smarter at secondstage.io/tracks.