Common Misconception: Impressions Are A Vanity Metric In Game Marketing

This article is part of a series published by Glitch Gaming addressing common misconceptions in game marketing that we often see perpetuated online, helping game developers better market their games. The common misconception being addressed here is that impressions are a "vanity metric." As one Redditor put it, they’re often dismissed as "a vanity metric that marketers like to wave around."

However, impressions (or views) are actually critical to the success of your game. They represent a top-of-funnel marketing activity that impacts your entire sales and marketing process. In this article, we’ll explore the role of impressions in your marketing funnel and why they’re essential for your game’s overall success.

An Analogy Outside of Gaming

To understand the importance of impressions, let’s use an analogy from outside the gaming world. Imagine it’s 1913—the year electric refrigerators were invented. These appliances revolutionized food storage, keeping food fresh longer, reducing waste, and improving household efficiency. In the modern world today, in developed countries 99.8% of households have a refrigerator, clearly showing the universal value of the appliance is indisputable. 

Now imagine you’re tasked with selling refrigerators in 1913 when they first came out. You find that only 10% of people who see your pitch end up buying one. You’re in the town of Blodgett Landing, New Hampshire, with a population of 101 people (look it up—this is the actual size of the town as of this writing). You manage to gather 50% of the town’s population in a town hall meeting for a presentation—50 people. These are your "impressions": people exposed to your product to even be aware that they can buy it.

If your 10% conversion rate holds steady, only five people will buy your refrigerator from your town meeting. Meanwhile, the other 51 residents, who didn’t attend, don’t even know your product exists. To grow sales, you have three options:

1. Retarget the 45 people who didn’t buy to try to further convince them.
2. Reach out to the 51 people who missed the meeting and are unaware, get those missed "impressions".
3. Expand to another town to reach more people and generate more “impressions”.

Linking this back to your game: impressions represent people learning about your game. Without them, potential players won’t even know your game exists to even consider buying it. Impressions are essential for creating awareness, and some of those impressions will eventually convert into sales.

Average Conversion Rates

In our marketing guide, we discussed the marketing funnel for games. To summarize:

1. Top of the Funnel: People learn your game exists.
2. Mid-Funnel: People convert into buyers or players.
3. Bottom of the Funnel: Retention and organic growth.

Awareness is important because it powers the other stages in the funnel, that decline in numbers as you go down. Using impressions with wishlist conversions as an example, for every 1,000 impressions, you can expect:

• Standard Game: 0.5% to 2% conversion rate (5 to 20 wishlist sign-ups).
• Well-Marketed Game: 1% to 3% conversion rate (10 to 30 wishlist sign-ups).
• Highly Anticipated Game: 5% to 10% conversion rate (50 to 100 wishlist sign-ups).

Now, scale this up:

• 100,000 Impressions:
  • Standard Game: 500 to 2,000 wishlists.
  • Well-Marketed Game: 1,000 to 3,000 wishlists.
  • Highly Anticipated Game: 5,000 to 10,000 wishlists.
• 1,000,000 Impressions:
  • Standard Game: 5,000 to 20,000 wishlists.
  • Well-Marketed Game: 10,000 to 30,000 wishlists.
  • Highly Anticipated Game: 50,000 to 100,000 wishlists.

These numbers highlight the importance of impressions in generating awareness and, ultimately, sales.

Impressions Help Identify Issues and Optimize Performance

Beyond awareness, impressions help you analyze and optimize your marketing strategy. If your conversion rate is low (e.g., 0.5%), it might signal issues such as:

• Landing Pages: Are they optimized with high-quality visuals, videos, and compelling copy?
• Call To Action: Is the call to action clear and compelling enough to get to perform the desired action?
• Social Proof: Are there positive reviews or testimonials about your game?
• Additional Resources: Do you provide links to socials, wikis, or other information about your game?
• Targeting: Are you using the right keywords and hashtags to reach your audience?

On social media, impressions also measure content effectiveness. Engagement rate is calculated as:(Likes + Shares + Comments) ÷ Impressions × 100

By testing different types of content (e.g., videos, memes, text posts) with comparing engagement to impressions, you can identify what resonates most with your audience and adjust your strategy to maximize engagement and ultimately conversions.

Low impression-to-conversion ratios can indicate underlying issues, so use these insights to refine your marketing funnel. But you need to know your impressions to have this analysis.

Impressions and Conversions Are a Long-Term Game

How many impressions should I expect when I post? Below is to set expectations on organic impression, and not paid promotion where you can pay for impressions.

For indie games, we’ve found that a single piece of content should reach 2% to 15% of your total follower count. For example, with 10,000 followers, one post might generate 500 to 1,500 impressions. The formula for this is (Impressions/Followers) x 100.

These two charts below are from one of our users that use our social scheduler to get the statistics on how their content performs over time:

As the content's impressions (views) go up, so the percentage of their reach.

Remember, impressions accumulate over time. If your goal is 100,000 impressions through organic growth (no paid promotions) to secure 500 to 2,000 wishlist sign-ups, you’ll need to consistently create and share content. On average, this might mean publishing around 66 pieces of content. Now if you are creating 3 pieces of content a week, it will take about 22 weeks or 5 months you to reach 1o0,000 impressions.

But as you create content, your follow growth should increase as well, make it easier to reach your goal. The point that we want to clearly convey is that getting the desired impression an results you want will take time and consistent effort.

Impressions Are Important

Impressions are far more than a "vanity metric." They’re the foundation of awareness, the first step in your marketing funnel, and a powerful tool for identifying and addressing gaps in your strategy. While it’s easy to dismiss views as inconsequential, remember that each impression represents a potential player learning about your game.

Building a successful campaign takes time, creativity, and persistence. Whether you’re pitching refrigerators in 1913 or marketing a game today, your audience—and your impressions—are key to your success. Focus on reaching more people, refining your message, and nurturing those impressions into conversions. The results will follow.