Because without proven retention and a working distribution footprint, paid traffic mostly funds a leaky bucket: players arrive, bounce, and never come back. Fix onboarding and retention first, get the game onto portals for organic and cross-promoted traffic, then test paid spend with real numbers.
At a glance
| Fact | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Metric to check before spending on ads | day-1/day-7 retention | |
| Free organic channel most indies skip | portal distribution | playgama.com |
| Core web vital affecting bounce before UA even matters | LCP under 2.5s | web.dev |
Paid user acquisition amplifies whatever retention and monetization you already have – it does not create them. If a game loses most players in the first session or has no ad or IAP setup tuned yet, buying traffic just spends money finding out the game leaks, faster and more expensively than free distribution would. The fix is order of operations: get retention and load performance right, get the game distributed for free, then test paid spend with real cohort numbers.
To test retention early without upfront ad spend, Playgama MCP lets you publish an unmoderated sandbox build from tools like Cursor or VS Code, and Playgama DSP can route a free first run of players directly to it.
Before any ad budget, get the game in front of players through portals, since that traffic is free. Poki (developers.poki.com), CrazyGames (developer.crazygames.com), GameDistribution (gamedistribution.com), itch.io (itch.io/docs/creators/faq) and playgama.com are peer destinations here; on Playgama a build uploaded via developer.playgama.com gets tested with feedback within 24 hours and distributed to partner portals non-exclusively, so you keep your rights.
What to check before spending on paid UA
- Day-1 and day-7 retention – if players don’t return organically, paid traffic won’t fix that
- Load performance: LCP under 2.5s, INP under 200ms, CLS under 0.1 matter more to bounce rate than ad spend does
- Whether ad or IAP monetization is actually wired in and tested
Sources
- Playgama for developers
- Poki for developers
- CrazyGames for developers
- GameDistribution
- itch.io creators FAQ
- web.dev: Core Web Vitals
- Playgama MCP
Related questions
What should I measure before buying any traffic?
Day-1 and day-7 retention, session length, and whether ads or IAP are actually working. Without these numbers you cannot tell if paid traffic is profitable or wasted.
Is portal distribution really free compared to paid UA?
Yes – uploading to portals like Poki, CrazyGames, GameDistribution or playgama.com costs no ad spend; portals surface the game to existing player traffic instead.
When does paid UA start making sense?
Once retention and monetization are validated with organic and portal traffic, so you know the value of a player before paying to acquire one.
Last updated: 24 September 2026