r/RedditforBusiness

I’ve read a few Reddit Ads post-mortems on this sub before starting my own campaigns and they helped me quite a bit, so figured I should give something back and share my own numbers too.

For context, I’m making Warlondor, a party-based tactical roguelite/RPG:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2783240/Warlondor/?utm_source=reddit&utm_campaign=beta_playtest&utm_medium=post

The game isn’t released yet, so this is really only about getting wishlists, not if the ads actually made profit. I’ll know that part after launch.

TLDR: Spent $1,160 on ads, but $500 of that was the new advertiser promo credit, so I paid about $660 myself. During the period the ads were running, my Steam wishlist count increased by 861, which means around $1.35 per wishlist using the full ad spend, or $0.77 per wishlist based on the money I actually paid.

Main things I learned: use Steam UTM tracking, don’t exclude mobile just because your game is on PC, USA is expensive but best english speaking buyers (based on my research via gamalytic), cheap clicks aren’t always good clicks, subreddit targeting works but keywords worked way better than I expected, and actual gameplay footage was the best thumbnail for me.

First thing I would do before spending anything is setup your Steam UTM links properly.

It doesn't really matter what exactly you call campaign/medium/content etc, as long as it makes sense to you later.

What does matter is testing the URL in Steamworks before actually putting money behind it.

One of the first examples I found online while learning how Steam UTM links work actually had a typo in the URL, so I’m very glad I used Steamworks UTM Link Checker instead of just copy pasting it.

Also make different links for different campaigns/ad types. You'll thank yourself later when you actually try to understand what worked.

I had basically no other meaningful wishlist driving marketing going on while I was running these ads, and had close to zero wishlist gain before it (and after too, sadly) which made this a pretty clean test compared to what you would normally get.

Wishlist activity while the ads were running

Reddit spend over time + overall campaign numbers

81% of my trusted Steam visits were mobile, only 19% were desktop.

If I had gone into Reddit Ads thinking "well I sell a PC game so obviously I only want desktop traffic", I would've excluded the majority of the traffic. People browse Reddit on their phones. That doesn't mean they don't play or buy PC games.

I didn't restrict device or gender at all and based on my results I really wouldn't do it unless you have a good reason.

Steam UTM traffic sources, countries, devices

I eventually separated USA from everything else because the costs were just completely different.

USA ended up at:

113,485 impressions / 3,436 clicks / 3.028% CTR / $0.28 CPC / $950.76 spend

while non-US was:

100,169 impressions / 1,642 clicks / 1.639% CTR / $0.13 CPC / $209.33 spend

So basically I was paying a little over 2x for a US click.

Outside the US I targeted Australia, Canada, Germany, France, Great Britain, South Korea, Netherlands, Poland, Sweden and Singapore.

My game and store page are currently English only. By "English countries" I don't mean English has to literally be the majority native language, more that I wanted countries which actually buy games on Steam and where I thought an English only game would still be fine for most Steam users.

I used Gamalytic to get some idea of actual purchasing power too.

This part is important IMO because you can probably make your ads very cheap by just targeting wherever Reddit gives you the lowest CPC.

But cheap traffic isn't neccesarily good traffic.

A $0.05 click from somebody who almost never buys games like yours isn't automatically better than a $0.30 click from somebody who actually spends money on Steam.

Especially if later you look at your wishlist number and start doing something like "10,000 wishlists = X revenue". That calculation can get very misleading depending on where those wishlists actually came from.

Non-US performance

USA campaign

Steam wishlists by region/country/language during the ad period

For bidding, I used Traffic as the objective since I was sending people directly to Steam.

I started with Lowest Cost.

Basically I just wanted Reddit to actually spend the budget for a few days and show me approximately what clicks cost for my game.

After I had some real numbers, I switched to Cost Cap and adjusted it based on what I was seeing.

So I wouldn't immediately dump a huge daily budget into it. Start smaller, give Reddit some data, fix whatever you screwed up, then increase it.

I also wouldn't give the campaign a hard end date. I just pause them when I don't want them running anymore, that way I can resume the same setup later and not force a new learning algorithm.

Also once I started spending Reddit assigned someone to the account who could help with questions. Just accept it IMO. There wasn't really any downside and it saved me some time as I could just ask anything I wanted to know.

For targeting I originally went with communities that seemed closest to my game:

r/roguelites
r/TurnBasedLovers
r/ForTheKing
r/AcrossTheObelisk
r/darkestdungeon
r/PlayTheBazaar
r/slaythespire

I also had Balatro in there originally, but removed it later because the CTR was considerably worse. Which is fair honestly. It's a roguelite but my game isn't really that similar to Balatro.

EDIT: Someone asked why I removed balatro, here is why

So I think similarity is more important than just finding the largest subreddits in your genre.

Other than communities + countries I mostly left everything alone. No gender, no devices, no other big pile of targeting options.

Then later I tried keywords, because my account manager suggested it.

This is probably the part that suprised me the most, because several posts/guides I read basically said don't bother with keyword targeting. So initially I didn't.

Eventually I figured I might as well test it and made separate keyword groups with around 250 included keywords and ~100 excluded ones. I used ChatGPT to help brainstorm the first list, then manually went over it because obviously alot of AI generated suggestions are going to be useless.

And... keywords actually worked.

In USA:

Subreddits were 2.990% CTR / $0.28 CPC

Keywords were 3.122% CTR / $0.27 CPC

So keywords were actually slightly better.

USA subreddit vs keyword targeting

Outside USA:

Subreddits were 1.731% CTR / $0.13 CPC

Keywords were 1.597% CTR / $0.13 CPC

So there subreddit targeting was slightly better on CTR, while cost was basically the same.

Non-US subreddit vs keyword targeting

I'm definitely not saying keywords are better than subreddits.

Just that I wouldn't automatically ignore them because somebody else said they don't work. For my game they were completely viable and I'd use both again.

For keywords I tried to avoid just putting stuff like RPG, strategy, roguelike and calling it done.

I used much more specific things like:

games like Across the Obelisk
games like Gloomhaven
5 player co op RPG
turn based roguelite
build synergy RPG
looking for a tactical RPG

Here are some of the lists if anybody wants to look through them:

Keywords #1

Keywords #2

Keywords #3

I also think exclusions are pretty important.

You can have a keyword that looks related to your game but has completely wrong intent behind it. Stuff like Diablo builds, mobile/gacha searches, FPS tactics, idle games, browser games etc.

Excluded keywords

Don't copy my list 1:1 obviously, but maybe it can give some ideas.

For the actual ads themselves, my biggest takeaway is very simple:

actual gameplay as thumbnail was king.

I made several ads with images, video, different copy etc. Give yourself some room to make bad ads because some of them are just not going to work.

I don't think you need some amazing marketing sentence either. Just tell people what the game actually is, ask a question, explain the hook, whatever feels natural.

Each ad also had a URL I could identify through UTM, I used a Learn More/View More type CTA, and I left comments enabled. Comments didn't really do much in my case but I don't see why I would disable them either.

One smaller interesting thing was placements:

Feed: 3.143% CTR
Conversations: 0.990% CTR

Placement breakdown + overall campaign numbers

I wouldn't say "never use Conversations" based on one campaign, but it's something I'd watch.

So, was it worth it?

For getting wishlists, yes, at least for me.

Reddit delivered $1,160 worth of advertising, $500 of that came from the promo credit, and my actual spend was about $660.

During that same period my wishlist count increased by 861.

So that's about $1.35 per wishlist if you count the full value of the ads, or around $0.77 per wishlist based on what actually left my pocket.

I'm pretty happy with that.

Would I say the ads were profitable? No idea.

I'll only know that part after release, and if there's interest I'll probably make another post then comparing these paid wishlists against actual sales.

Hopefully some of this is useful to somebody else setting it up.

If anyone is planning to run Reddit Ads for their own game and wants more details about anything I did, targeting, bidding, UTM setup, keywords, countries, creatives, whatever just ask. Happy to share anything I can and help if I know the answer

I plan and book out of home advertising. Billboards, bus stops, digital screens, that sort of thing.

Over the last few months the enquiries have shifted. More and more of them are prize draw operators. The ones raffling off houses and supercars.

None of this is illegal and I’m not claiming anyone has been done over. But it’s been bugging me and I want to know if I’m being precious about it.

Here’s the problem with the format. A 48 sheet gets you maybe two seconds from someone driving past. So the poster carries about six words. What makes the cut is a house and a big number. What doesn’t make the cut is entry cost, odds of winning, whether the draw still goes ahead if they don’t shift enough tickets, and what happens to your money if it doesn’t.

Online, all that is at least a click away in the terms. On a billboard there is no click. There’s just the house.
DCMS commissioned a market study from London Economics on this. Roughly 7.4 million UK adults enter these draws, worth something like £1.3bn a year. Not a niche. Back in May the Prize Competition Council published a voluntary code, which is a reasonable start, though “voluntary” is doing a lot of heavy lifting there.

The bit I keep coming back to is that the advertising side has no standard at all. Gambling ads have rules about this stuff. Prize draws sit outside the Gambling Act because of the free entry route, so they don’t.
I’m not arguing for banning anything. I’d just like entry cost and odds to be a line in the artwork spec, the same way APR has to appear on a finance ad. If a draw only stacks up when nobody can see the numbers, the numbers are the issue.

Happy to be told I’ve got this wrong. Anyone worked on one of these from the operator side?

Hi everyone! I'm trying to figure out Reddit's paid advertising for our game and have a few questions. We're a small 3-person indie studio and we're about to release our announce date trailer, which will be the core of the adv. In your opinion:

• How much budget makes sense to start with?
• What CTR should I realistically expect? (I found 0.2% as an average in this blog post from last year. wondering if anyone has more up-to-date numbers) Also are there any other KPI to consider?
• Which subreddits are worth targeting for indie games? (I have a few in mind based on my game's genre, but I'd love to expand the list with your suggestions)
• Any dos and don'ts you've learned the hard way?

Any insight from people who've been through this would be really appreciated!
Thanks :)