Making Attractive Campaigns
Creators on Jestr choose which campaigns they want to participate in.
At a high level, they're deciding whether a campaign gives them two things:
- An opportunity to make good content
- An opportunity to earn well if that content performs
Creators may be interested in several campaigns at once, but they only have so much time to play, record, edit, and publish content. Every campaign is competing for some of that time.
They're also weighing the effort required to make the content against the potential reward. Two equally interesting campaigns with similar parameters can feel very different if one requires significantly more time or effort to turn into a great video.
If an opportunity feels difficult to create for, overly restrictive, or unlikely to reward their time, creators may deprioritize it or skip it altogether.
The most attractive campaigns therefore tend to do two things well: give creators meaningful upside and remove as much friction as possible from participating.
What makes a campaign attractive?
There are a lot of variables that can influence creator participation, but we've generally found the biggest factors are:
- The game itself
- Campaign budget
- Maximum creator reward
- CPM
- Everything else (timing, submissions, assets, talking points, guidelines, keys, and other campaign decisions)
You won't always be able to control the first one.
What you can control is how compelling you make the opportunity around it.
Your game matters
Some games naturally lend themselves to short-form content more easily than others.
A visually distinctive game, chaotic co-op experience, recognizable title, or game built around surprising moments may immediately give creators ideas for content.
Other genres can require more work to communicate quickly. A strategy game, factory automation game, or mechanically complex title might be an incredible game while still being more difficult to turn into a short-form video that gets someone's attention.
That doesn't mean those games can't work on Jestr.
It means the rest of the campaign should account for how difficult the opportunity is for creators.
A recognizable or highly social game may attract significant creator interest at relatively standard parameters because creators already believe they can make successful content from it.
A more niche or challenging game may benefit from stronger rewards to compensate creators for taking on that additional risk.
Budget gives creators confidence
After the game itself, campaign budget is one of the strongest signals creators have when deciding whether an opportunity is worth prioritizing.
A larger budget means there's more money available for creators to earn before the campaign is exhausted.
This becomes especially important for campaigns that are likely to be popular.
Experienced creators understand that if a highly anticipated campaign launches with a relatively small budget, that budget could disappear quickly. By the time they play the game, record something, edit it, and publish, there may be significantly less opportunity remaining.
That can cause creators to skip an otherwise attractive campaign.
Creators may also look at the relationship between the total campaign budget and individual maximum reward. If a $5,000 campaign offers a $2,000 creator maximum, for example, a creator may reasonably assume that only a handful of strong-performing creators could consume most of the available budget.
The larger the campaign, the more confidence creators have that there's room for multiple people to participate successfully.
Commit the budget you're already comfortable spending
If you already intend to spend $20,000 on a campaign, we generally recommend launching it with the full $20,000 rather than starting at $10,000 and planning to add another $10,000 later.
From the creator's perspective:
$10,000 + a possible $10,000 later isn't the same opportunity as $20,000 available from the beginning.
Creators don't know whether you'll actually increase the budget later. They can only make decisions based on the opportunity available to them now.
A larger upfront budget gives creators more confidence that there will still be room to earn by the time their content goes live.
Because unused campaign funds are returned as Jestr Credits, there's generally little benefit to withholding budget you already intend to allocate.
If you're comfortable committing $20,000, show creators a $20,000 opportunity.
For more information, see Budget, CPM & Rewards and Jestr Credits.
Maximum rewards attract stronger creators
If budget represents the size of the overall opportunity, the maximum creator reward represents the upside available to an individual creator.
This matters particularly for established creators who know they're capable of generating significant views.
If a creator believes they could make a breakout video but their earnings would be capped very quickly, the campaign becomes less compelling.
Put simply:
Why invest the time to make a breakout video if the earning opportunity stops being meaningful long before then?
As a general starting point, we recommend keeping your creator maximum around 10% of your overall campaign budget.
For example:
$5,000 budget → ~$500+ maximum
$10,000 budget → ~$1,000+ maximum
$20,000 budget → ~$2,000+ maximum
These aren't targets you need to stick to exactly. Depending on the game and creators you're trying to attract, Jestr may recommend going higher.
Think of the minimum maximum as a floor, not necessarily the optimal setting.
For more information on how creator maximums work, see Budget, CPM & Rewards.
CPM helps attract creator volume
Your CPM determines how quickly creators earn for the views they generate.
Higher CPMs can make a campaign more appealing to a broader range of creators, but the right CPM depends heavily on the game.
A recognizable game or one that naturally lends itself to viral short-form content may be highly attractive at a $5–$6 CPM because creators believe there's a strong chance their content will perform.
A lesser-known, niche, or more difficult-to-cover game may need a higher CPM to make that risk worthwhile.
Consider the time required to make the content, too. If two games are equally interesting and offer the same CPM, but one can be picked up and turned into a video quickly while the other requires several hours of learning or preparation, the easier opportunity may naturally be prioritized.
A stronger CPM can help compensate for campaigns that ask more of a creator's time.
Rather than asking:
What's the lowest CPM we can run?
A better question is:
Given this game, how compelling does the reward need to be for creators to choose it over their other opportunities?
As a useful mental model:
CPM helps attract a greater volume of creators.
Maximum rewards help attract creators with greater earning potential.
Both matter, but they solve slightly different problems.
Use active campaigns as a benchmark
You don't have to choose your CPM completely in the dark.
During campaign setup, Jestr shows the average CPM across currently active campaigns, giving you a benchmark for the other opportunities creators are seeing at the same time.
Remember that CPM is only one part of the equation. A particularly recognizable or creator-friendly game may remain highly competitive below the current average, while a game that requires more time or effort to cover may need to offer more.
When you submit your campaign for review, the Jestr team will also review your parameters and may recommend changes based on the game, campaign, and the other opportunities available to creators.
Many of the recommendations in this guide are the same principles we use when reviewing campaigns before they go live.
For more information, see Campaign Review.
Give creators room to make multiple videos
Submission limits also affect how creators approach a campaign.
The right number depends heavily on the type of content creators are likely to make.
For news, announcement, and showcase-style content, one or two submissions may be enough. There may only be so many meaningful angles for a creator to cover around a single beat.
For gameplay-driven campaigns, we generally recommend giving creators significantly more room to experiment.
A gameplay creator might play your game for several hours or stream it and come away with multiple moments worth turning into videos.
One clip might generate 5,000 views.
Another might generate 50,000.
The next might generate 1,000,000.
You don't know which one will work beforehand — and neither does the creator. This is exactly why experimentation matters.
Don't worry too much about audience overlap
Studios sometimes worry that allowing the same creator to post repeatedly means showing the game to the same audience over and over.
Short-form distribution doesn't work quite that neatly.
Platforms algorithmically distribute individual videos, and different posts from the same creator can reach very different audiences.
A video that receives relatively little distribution may barely reach a meaningful portion of that creator's potential audience at all.
As long as creators are experimenting with different moments, hooks, or ideas, multiple submissions give your campaign more opportunities to find something that works.
For gameplay-heavy campaigns, 5+ submissions can often make sense.
For more information, see How Submissions Work and Bonus Batches.
Give creators time to prepare
Creators have their own content schedules.
A short campaign window doesn't necessarily create urgency. Sometimes it simply means creators can't fit your game into their schedule.
This is particularly important for embargoed campaigns.
Whenever possible, giving creators one to two weeks of access before an embargo lifts can make a significant difference.
That gives them time to:
Join → get access → find an idea → record → edit → schedule their post
instead of asking them to rearrange everything around a campaign they only discovered a few days earlier.
It also increases the likelihood that content is ready when your embargo lifts, giving you a stronger initial wave of creator coverage rather than waiting for content to gradually trickle in afterward.
For more information, see Campaign Timing & Embargoes.
Make accessing the game easy
If creators need to play your game to make content, make that process as frictionless as possible.
Working keys, clear build instructions, and enough available access can make a meaningful difference.
For multiplayer and co-op games, consider allowing creators to claim multiple keys so they can bring a friend into the game.
You don't necessarily need to give every creator enough keys to fill an entire lobby. Even allowing two or three keys per creator can make organizing a session considerably easier, especially when creators can coordinate with other participants.
Not every campaign needs keys, particularly when you're running something earlier in development or providing footage instead.
But when game access is part of the campaign, test your build and keys before creators receive them.
For more information, see Keys & Key Requests.
Use as few restrictions as you need
Guidelines exist to protect the requirements that actually matter to your campaign.
They shouldn't be used to control every aspect of how creators make content.
Every additional restriction removes potential ideas, formats, or creators from your campaign.
Whenever you're considering a guideline, ask:
Does every creator genuinely need to follow this, or would we simply prefer it?
If it's a preference, it may be better suited as a Talking Point rather than a strict Campaign Guideline.
In general, we recommend giving creators as much freedom as your campaign and brand allow.
For more information, see Campaign Guidelines.
Consider additional content formats
Some optional campaign settings can create additional opportunities for creators.
List-style videos
Allowing list-style content gives creators the ability to feature your game alongside other games — for example, as part of a genre recommendation or roundup.
These formats can perform particularly well in the right context, but they aren't something we recommend universally.
Key giveaways
Allowing creators to give away game keys can provide another angle for content and may encourage additional engagement.
Again, this isn't necessary for every campaign.
Both are worth experimenting with when they make sense for your game rather than treating them as requirements for a successful campaign.
For more information on these options, see Campaign Guidelines.
AI usage can affect creator interest
Creators have different attitudes toward AI-generated content.
Some don't mind it. Others may choose not to cover games that make significant use of generative AI at all.
If your game contains AI-generated content, this may reduce the number of creators interested in participating, regardless of the other parameters you've configured.
This isn't necessarily something you can change at the campaign level, but it is something worth accounting for when setting expectations around creator participation.
Most importantly, disclose AI usage accurately so creators can make that decision for themselves.
Your campaign page matters
Jestr is, in many ways, a game discovery marketplace for creators.
The audience is still gamers, but instead of deciding which game to spend money on, creators are deciding which game to spend their time making content about.
That means presentation matters.
When a creator is browsing a large number of available campaigns, they're making quick judgments based on things like:
- Your cover art
- Trailer
- Screenshots and gameplay
- The opening description of your game
- How polished the game appears
- Whether there's an immediately understandable hook
Think about your campaign page similarly to how you'd think about your Steam page.
A creator shouldn't need to dig through several paragraphs to understand what makes your game different.
If the first thing they see feels generic or doesn't communicate what makes the game interesting, it's easy to move on to the next opportunity.
Make your strongest visual and conceptual hooks obvious early.
For more information on customizing your campaign's presentation, see Campaign Styling.
Talking points and assets matter too
Once the economics and structure of your campaign make sense, creators still need to answer another question:
What would I actually make a video about?
This is where good talking points and assets can make an otherwise average-looking opportunity considerably more interesting.
Don't just give creators a list of features:
- Roguelike deckbuilder
- 100+ cards
- 30 power-ups
Help them understand what's actually interesting about those features.
Maybe there's an unusual mechanic, a ridiculous interaction, an interesting story behind the game's development, a challenge creators can attempt, or something surprising about how the game came together.
Sometimes the most compelling creator angle isn't a feature at all.
Giving creators those hooks makes it easier for them to imagine the content before they've even started playing.
Give creators usable footage
The same applies to your assets.
For creators who rely on provided footage, particularly news and showcase creators, the quality of your B-roll can directly affect whether they decide they can make a good video about your game.
Provide footage that is:
- Visually interesting
- High quality
- Easy to understand without additional context
- Representative of your best gameplay
- Varied enough to support different parts of a video
- Free of unnecessary UI, watermarks, or other distractions where possible
A creator may like your game but still skip the campaign if they don't believe the available footage gives them enough to make a compelling video.
We'll go much deeper into both of these topics next in Writing Better Talking Points and Building Great Asset Packs.
Larger campaigns
For particularly large campaigns, Jestr can provide additional ways to increase campaign visibility.
Campaigns at $50,000+ can be eligible for additional featured placement, including prominent campaign banners shown to creators across Jestr.
These placements can generate a significant amount of attention and content, but they aren't necessary — or appropriate — for every campaign.
If you're considering a larger activation, reach out to the Jestr team and we can help determine what makes sense for your game and goals.
Don't optimize the opportunity away
It's natural to want to make your campaign budget as efficient as possible.
But creators are making the same calculation from the opposite side.
They're asking whether your campaign deserves their time compared with every other game, campaign, stream, video, and opportunity available to them.
Trying to minimize every parameter — the smallest budget, lowest acceptable CPM, lowest possible creator maximum, fewest keys, shortest timeline, and most restrictive guidelines — may look efficient on paper while making the opportunity considerably less attractive in practice.
The strongest campaigns give creators room to succeed.
You don't need to maximize every parameter. Instead, think about the opportunity as a whole and ask:
If I were a creator choosing between several campaigns, would I be excited to spend my time on this one?
That's ultimately what you're competing for.
Next step: Writing Better Talking Points
Once you've created an opportunity creators want to participate in, the next step is helping them understand what makes your game interesting enough to turn into content.
Continue to Writing Better Talking Points for recommendations on giving creators useful inspiration without telling them exactly what to make.