Steam campaign reports need careful denominators

Steam's UTM Analytics can connect tagged store links with visits and subsequent actions, but its columns describe different groups of people.

Valve distinguishes total visits, trusted visits that filter bots and crawlers, and tracked visits from signed-in users after additional filtering. Conversion reporting includes wishlists, purchases and activations, with a 72-hour window following the link visit.

The reports are aggregate. They do not expose Steam IDs, and privacy choices or movement between browsers and apps can limit attribution. A player who later searches for the game elsewhere may not remain connected to the originating campaign.

For a studio, that means a conversion percentage needs an explicit denominator. Dividing attributed purchases by all clicks answers a different question from comparing them with tracked visits.

Use consistent campaign labels and test links before distribution. Read the results alongside their coverage limits and the game's wider sales data. The dashboard supports investigation; it does not prove that every untracked visit failed or that a campaign caused every purchase recorded nearby.