Steam has announced a series of changes to its traffic data reporting, aiming to provide aggregated data on overall store page traffic and gauge the efficacy of external sourced traffic. These updates will continue to prioritize player privacy and preferences and will be implemented over the coming months.
The three primary components of this update include the addition of new data and features to the Store & Steam Platform Traffic reporting, improvements to the in-built UTM integration to better measure wishlist, purchase, and activation conversions, and discontinuation of support for Google Analytics.
In line with Steam’s privacy-first approach, none of the new tools or features will share personally identifiable information. To protect privacy, sources of traffic that fall below a certain threshold will be reported as “other”, and Steam will not collect or store demographic information about users.
The updates to Store & Steam Platform Traffic Reporting are a response to feedback from game developers. Despite the detailed reports on traffic from within and outside Steam, developers felt that certain useful information was missing.
Addressing these concerns, Steam will soon offer a geographic breakdown of the visitors to store pages, beneficial for deciding game language support and server locations for multiplayer games. Also, developers will gain more insights into which websites are driving traffic to their store pages, with the presentation of external traffic sources set to detail more common domains.
Steam’s UTM system, which assists developers in gauging the effectiveness of marketing campaigns through aggregated user conversion data, will also receive updates. These changes will include increased tracking percentages and one-day conversion tracking. Developers will also get geographic breakdowns for their store page visitors, insights into the device types (mobile vs desktop) used by visitors, and data on new versus returning users.
As of July, Steam will discontinue support for Google Analytics, as Google ends operations for Universal Analytics (UA) and replaces it with Google Analytics 4 (GA4). Steam has determined that Google’s tracking solutions don’t align with its approach to customer privacy. Consequently, as of July 1st, data from Steam will no longer be available on Google Analytics. Instead, Steam will concentrate on integrating essential aspects of aggregated reporting into its platform.
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