What a gaming creator campaign actually costs.
Median values across five years of campaigns we ran and measured ourselves. Use them as a starting point, not a promise — the spread inside any one market is wide.
| Country | CPM per 1,000 views |
|---|---|
| USA | $43.02 |
| Australia | $38.59 |
| United Kingdom | $35.31 |
| France | $28.95 |
| Canada | $28.32 |
| Italy | $25.71 |
| Japan | $18.32 |
| Mexico | $14.95 |
| Creator category | CTR from views |
|---|---|
| MUAs | 0.91% |
| Podcast | 0.79% |
| Sports | 0.61% |
| Entertainment | 0.54% |
| Comedy | 0.43% |
| How-Tos | 0.34% |
| Cars | 0.24% |
| Family | 0.23% |
| Platform | Install CR · revenue per download |
|---|---|
| iOS | 47% · $32.44 |
| Android | 32% · $19.23 |
| Web | 26% · $24.95 |
For comparison: generic paid user acquisition
The same three metrics for ordinary paid UA, which is what the calculator blends against: $12.00 CPM, 6.00% CTR, 6.00% install conversion.
Read the two CTRs against different denominators before concluding that paid ads win. Paid CTR is measured on ad impressions; creator CTR is measured on video views, where a single view is a far heavier unit of attention than an impression. The numbers that settle the comparison are cost per install and ROAS, not click rate.
The same budget, nine times the result.
Cost data alone forecasts nothing, because two integrations at an identical CPM do not perform alike. These are the multipliers we apply, and they compound: the worst combination runs at 0.29×, the best at 2.52×.
Content type
How the game appears in the video.
- Voice-over / AI voice
- ×0.6
- Pre-recorded ad
- ×0.8
- Face in the shot
- ×1.0
- Commentary, active interaction
- ×1.2
- Genuine, authentic gameplay
- ×1.4
Integration length
How much of the video the game gets.
- < 60 sec
- ×0.8
- 60–90 sec
- ×0.9
- 90–120 sec
- ×1.0
- 120+ sec
- ×1.1
- Dedicated video
- ×1.2
Competitive landscape
What else that audience has been sold recently.
- Competitor ad currently active
- ×0.6
- Non-competitor ad currently active
- ×0.7
- Competitor ad less than a month ago
- ×0.9
- Competitor ad less than 3 months ago
- ×1.1
- No ads present
- ×1.5
The single largest lever is the last one. An audience that saw a competitor's game this week converts at 0.6×; the same creator with a clean slate converts at 1.5×. Which is why we brief against a creator's recent sponsorship history rather than their follower count.
How the forecast is built.
Six steps, no black box. Quality is the product of the three multipliers above.
- Step 1
Views
budget ÷ CPM × 1,000
- Step 2
Clicks
views × CTR × quality
- Step 3
Installs
clicks × install CR
- Step 4
Cost per install
budget ÷ installs
- Step 5
Revenue
installs × revenue per download
- Step 6
ROAS
revenue ÷ budget
Where the numbers come from
- Period
- Retrospective data across the last five years of campaigns run by Zorka.Agency.
- Basis
- Our own campaign reporting for game and app clients — not a third-party survey and not an industry aggregate. Figures are medians; the spread inside any single market or category is wide, and a specific creator can sit well outside it.
- How to read CTR
- Creator CTR is a share of video views. Paid-media CTR is a share of ad impressions. The two are not comparable directly, which is why the model blends them only after converting both into installs.
- What this is not
- A guarantee. It is a planning instrument: good enough to size a budget, choose a market and argue about a media mix, not to underwrite a result.
Let's win the
game.
Whether you're soft-launching, scaling, or relaunching — we'll bring the creators, the creative and the numbers.