How effective is paid advertising for an arcade PC (Win / Mac) game?

Hi Everyone,

Just like I believe many indies with a game at a relatively early stage of development, I'm experiencing all the pleasures and ordeals of trying to get as much exposure as possible. Being present at events, social media (best traction thus far!), forums, indiedbs, reddits - you name it. As I'm working towards a first polished demo - press releases and contacting twitchers, youtubers, bloggers, websites and press crop up on the horizon. And let's not forget trying some IGF, Indiecade and the likes. There's loads of info and advice of various kind about all mentioned above all over the Internet.

There's one thing I'm quite curious about though, and I'd love to hear from more experienced colleagues here who got their games published on Steam / GOG. That is, did you use any paid advertising to boost sales of your game? Did it work and where did you advertise? Adwords / Bing Ads? Reddit ads? BuyAds? Other?

Also, any success stories with some experimental / guerilla marketing? Anyone ran through city centre naked shouting his / her game's title to increase sales? Wink

Thanks,

Luke