Hey guys,

Does anyone have experience with running facebook ads in 23/24 to generate Steam game sales?

Does it work? If not facebook maybe some other ads?

Thanks,
Robert

I mean running facebook ads in recent year. Asking if someone was doing it recently and it works, not like in 2016 it was working for me.

That's going to depend entirely on your game, and details of the ads.

Ads take a lot of impressions before they draw people to your product, and they need to fit. If you're running ads for a golf game targeting golf players, plus print ads in in Golf Magazine, and golfing segments of ESPN, they're bound to be somewhat effective. If you're running those same exact slots but have a blood-filled shooter, they're going to be less effective.

Facebook has a general demographic. You can target even more specific demographics on the platform. Make sure it matches your game.

And as always with marketing, even if people are initially attracted by the ad, they might decide they don't like the product.

@frob thanks, do you have experience with it? Assuming you will target the right audience and your ad will show the game nicely, do you see it converting to sales?

robertrobert said:
@frob thanks, do you have experience with it?

Mostly from being in meetings where ad campaigns are discussed, but usually even that is overhearing parts of multi-million dollar ad campaigns.

robertrobert said:
Assuming you will target the right audience and your ad will show the game nicely, do you see it converting to sales?

Maybe. In the US, Facebook demographics are the largest subgroup age 25-34 but covers a broad spread from mis-entered pre-teens to geriatrics, so the average age is older. You can target different sub-groups. I wouldn't make Facebook the sole place to advertise unless you're making a game specifically for the platform. Those days are largely past, 2008-2010 or so, quickly dying off. Facebook Gaming streaming platform also had a moment, then shut down with Twitch.

If it is targeting your ideal demographic, sure, it might be a source of useful exposure. A typical click through rate is around 1% and many are mis-clicks. Marketers say generally people need to see an ad that they're interested in 7 times before they'll be interested enough to click. If they aren't interested no exposure count is worth it. If they're interested and click then they'll go wherever the ad points to, and those numbers leading to a conversion are typically somewhere around 0.5% from what I've read, but again they vary. So simple math, even doing everything “right” you're looking at 140,000 impressions = 1 sale. (Math to double check: 7 exposures per person before they'll click, about 1% of people click = 700 exposures before they make it to your website, 0.5% buy so multiply 700*200=140000.) And even THAT is after saturation, you could buy a million ad impressions and with 2.9 billion people on facebook that is gone in a few minutes with only a single impression on a subset of potential customers.

In the professional markets usually marketing budget equals or exceeds the cost of main development. Roughly 1/3 to main development, roughly 1/3 to marketing, roughly 1/6 to pre- and post- production and support, roughly 1/6 for business expenses ranging from keeping the lights on to bizdev to paying the accountants and lawyers and janitors. So if the game cost 30 million in development cost, expect another 30 million (or more) in marketing cost.

If you're expecting to spend a couple hundred dollars on Facebook ads all by itself, don't expect a lot back. You might make a couple sales, but I really wouldn't count on it. If you're expecting to spend a couple hundred dollars on Facebook ads in addition to ads on various ad networks also with a couple hundred dollars each, I'd think you might have a little better luck. Ad campaigns often go with a marketplace saturation approach, or look for more organic methods.

@frob thanks for such a detailed explanation, really appreciate it.

From my experience most active users on Facebook are older people (40+) that may not be as tech savy to have Steam installed or even want to buy/install games - at most play something on mobile or in the browser.

The ‘younger crowd’ are more on Instagram or TikTok.

So, IMHO, placing ads on Facebook for a Steam game would be waste of time and money - unless your game actually runs on Facebook (those ‘instant’ games).

But beware, I never had a good ammount (in thousands of USD) to spend on ads.

@SLotman thanks that is a fair point that facebook users are now more older, Instagram is mainly a mobile app so I don't know how that would work to advertise on mobile when steam is PC. Which platform from your experience works best?