Marketing video games used to be a relatively straightforward exercise. In the early days, publishers would simply buy ad space, pay for impressions, and hope that the sheer volume of eyeballs would translate into sales. That approach made sense when most titles were sold as boxed, single‑player experiences that required a one‑time purchase.
However, the landscape has shifted dramatically with the rise of free‑to‑play (F2P) live‑service games on PC, and the old model no longer fits. Amit Nagrani, head of business development and client success at PWN Games—a performance‑marketing specialist celebrating its tenth anniversary—observes that many PC publishers still cling to traditional awareness‑driven campaigns. These campaigns typically involve brand pushes, creator collaborations, and paid media on platforms such as Meta, Google, YouTube, and Twitch.
While such tactics can still be effective for premium, launch‑focused titles, they are increasingly mismatched with modern live‑service F2P games that require a steady flow of new players over months and years. "With premium games, the purchase is the whole thing," Nagrani explains.
"The spend goes heavily into awareness and consideration through the pre‑launch window, building recognition and wishlists, and then UA kicks in hard at launch as a boost. That's a sensible way to do it, because once someone buys and installs, the revenue is in." In contrast, live‑service games operate on a completely different premise. "Live service is a different proposition, free‑to‑play especially.
You don't catch the launch wave and call it done. You need players arriving steadily, year after year. And getting someone to play is only the start.
You've got to keep them engaged and eventually get them converting, because that's where the revenue actually comes from," Nagrani says. Traditional user‑acquisition (UA) models—cost‑per‑mille (CPM) and cost‑per‑click (CPC)—are less suited to this ongoing engagement model and also carry higher financial risk. Historically, publishers expected to recoup acquisition costs within 30 days, a timeline inherited from mobile‑first publishers who were accustomed to rapid payback.
Today, depending on genre and market, the payback window can stretch from three to twelve months. "When you’re looking that far out, you need a lot more confidence in the quality of the players you’re bringing in," Nagrani notes. Enter cost‑per‑action (CPA), also known as cost‑per‑acquisition.
CPA shifts the payment structure from speculative impressions or clicks to concrete, pre‑defined actions that directly correlate with revenue potential. "You pay when a defined 'action' happens, and you choose which 'action' that is," Nagrani says. "It moves as the game moves through its lifecycle, and choosing it well is an important conversation I have with a game publisher before we go live." Before launch, a CPA campaign might reward users for signing up to receive more information about the title. There are two common opt‑in methods: single opt‑in (SOI), where a player simply submits their details, and double opt‑in (DOI), which adds a verification email step.
DOI costs more because it filters out less‑interested prospects, but it can improve conversion rates once the game ships. The choice depends on the publisher’s confidence in their funnel and how well they expect early interest to translate into paying users. At launch, the most basic CPA action is an install. However, experienced publishers rarely stop there.
They often add a qualification layer—such as requiring the player to reach day‑1 (D1) or day‑7 (D7) retention milestones, or to complete the tutorial—before the install counts as a paid action. This ensures that the publisher pays for a player who has demonstrated a minimum level of engagement, not just a download. As the game matures, CPA can target deeper funnel actions, like a first in‑game purchase or a certain amount of playtime.
Naturally, the cost per conversion rises as the action moves further down the funnel because the advertiser is buying more certainty. "The trade‑off is always the same: the further down the funnel you buy, the more certainty you're paying for, and certainty is never free," Nagrani explains. "The cost per conversion goes up, and in some cases volume gets harder to find." Because CPA aligns payment directly with measurable outcomes, it dovetails neatly with a game’s lifetime value (LTV) calculations.
Publishers can model how much a registered or paying player is worth over a 90‑day or longer horizon, then set CPA payouts that keep the payback period within acceptable limits. "Everything is built around LTV.
CPM and CPC don't connect to it. You buy impressions, you buy clicks, and then you hope the rest of the funnel behaves. CPA connects to it directly, because you're paying for the outcome you already modelled," Nagrani says.
"So the return stops being something you find out afterwards. If your data says a registered player is worth $30 over 90 days, we set the payout so the maths works inside your payback window. You know your ROAS going in, not three months later." CPA also rebalances risk between the publisher and the marketing partner.
Under CPM or CPC, the publisher bears the risk of poor targeting or ineffective creative, paying regardless of results. With CPA, the acquisition partner only earns when a qualified conversion occurs, giving both sides a shared incentive to optimize targeting, creative assets, and audience segmentation. "On CPM or CPC, if the targeting is off or the creative isn't landing, the publisher still pays," Nagrani notes.
"With CPA, we're only paid when a qualified conversion happens, so we've got the same reason to find out what's wrong as they do. Both sides are looking at the same number, and that tends to produce a more collaborative working relationship." Nevertheless, CPA is not a silver bullet. It works best when the underlying game is of sufficient quality to attract and retain players.
A poorly designed game cannot be rescued simply by a smarter pricing model. CPA merely ensures that the financial risk is shared and that both parties are motivated to diagnose and fix issues—whether they stem from traffic sources, creative messaging, regional performance disparities, or mismatched audience expectations.
In practice, this means continuous testing and iteration. The acquisition partner must monitor which traffic sources deliver high‑quality installs, which creative assets convey the game's value proposition, and how different regions respond to the same campaign. If one audience shows strong install rates but low retention, the partner must adjust targeting or creative to improve post‑install performance, because their revenue depends on those outcomes. In summary, CPA has become the preferred UA model for top PC free‑to‑play publishers because it ties spend directly to measurable actions that drive revenue, aligns with LTV modeling, and distributes risk evenly between publisher and marketer.
It encourages a partnership mentality where both sides work toward the same goal: delivering high‑quality, engaged players who eventually convert into paying customers. As Nagrani puts it, "CPA is a win‑win model for game publishers and us.
We win only if they win." For more information about PWN Games and their conversion‑driven performance‑marketing approach for PC titles, visit pwngames.com.