TikTok, YouTube Shorts or Instagram Reels: Where Should Your Game Be?

Short answer: all three, with the same video. In our campaigns the platform that carries the reach changes from game to game. TikTok brought most of the views for Fracture Point and SOS OPS!. Instagram Reels did it for UnLoop and, by a small margin, Catch Meow If You Can. You can't know in advance which feed will pick up a clip, so post everywhere and pay for views wherever they happen.

"Which platform should we focus on?" is one of the first questions studios ask. The honest answer from our data is that picking one is the mistake.

What does the split look like in real campaigns?

Views by platform from campaigns that published the split:

Game	TikTok	Instagram Reels	YouTube Shorts	Total views
Fracture Point	853,706	497,761	237,455	1,588,922
Catch Meow If You Can	1.09M	1.14M	the rest	2,372,383
UnLoop	596,819	1.68M	102,877	2,381,647
SOS OPS!	about 73%	2.4M	the rest	11,452,423

Three things stand out:

• The leader changes. TikTok won two of these, Reels won two.
• Reels can carry a whole campaign with one video. UnLoop's 1.68M Reels views came from just 10 Reels, one of them at 1.07M. A single Reel on Vacation Cafe Simulator reached 1.17M.
• Shorts brought the smallest share in every campaign above. It still added views at no extra production cost, because it was the same video.

Why post the same video everywhere?

Because the expensive part of a video is making it, not uploading it. Once a creator has a good clip, putting it on a second and third platform costs a few minutes, and each feed is a separate chance for the algorithm to pick it up. Several Global Rescue creators cross-posted the same recording to all three to get more reach out of each one.

Campaigns don't have to be even, either. Shipping Store Simulator 2037 had 29 TikToks, 18 Shorts and 17 Reels from 43 creators in 48 hours. What matters is that the game showed up in all three feeds in the same days.

Upload the file, not a repost

When the same video goes to three platforms, export a clean file and upload it natively to each one. Reposting a clip downloaded from another app, with that app's watermark on it, looks like recycled content to viewers and to the platforms. It is a small step that is easy to skip when you are posting fast.

What about your own studio accounts?

Same logic, smaller scale. Post your clips on all three for a couple of weeks, then look at watch time, not views, since new accounts start with no audience. The small budget guide has the full routine. The clips people watch to the end are the hooks to give creators, as described in our influencer marketing guide for indie games.

Can you target specific countries?

Partly. On Trapster you can set tiered CPM, a higher rate for audiences in your main markets and lower rates for the rest. Then check where wishlists actually came from in Steamworks. Catch Meow If You Can didn't target any region, and its biggest regions were Western Europe and North America. More on reading that report in how to measure wishlists from a creator campaign.

FAQ

Which platform is best for indie game marketing?
None on its own. In our campaigns TikTok led on some games and Instagram Reels on others, so the safest plan is the same video on all three.

Is YouTube Shorts worth it?
It brought the smallest share of views in the campaigns above, but posting there costs almost nothing once the video exists. Leaving it out only removes views.

Is Instagram Reels good for games?
Yes. It carried most of the views on UnLoop and slightly more than TikTok on Catch Meow If You Can, and single Reels passed a million views on two campaigns.

Do I pay differently per platform?
On Trapster you pay per verified view on all three. You can set tiered CPM by audience region.

Get your game into all three feeds

Trapster campaigns run on TikTok, YouTube Shorts and Instagram Reels, with views tracked on each. See Trapster for studios or book a call.

Sources: campaign figures come from Trapster case studies.