I can relate to the “scattered interest” part, even without ads or formal campaigns.
For me, most inbound interest comes from posts on socials or directly from Itch, and the signal-to-noise ratio is very different. Views and likes are easy to miss or forget, but longer comments, DMs, or people asking very specific questions are what I treat as real intent.
I don’t have a routing system beyond manually keeping track of those conversations, but I’ve learned that during updates or small launches, slowing down and answering those messages properly is more valuable than watching overall traffic numbers. That’s usually where playtesters and meaningful feedback come from.