Yubo

The Objective

Yubo is a rapidly growing friendship-building app made for young people aged 13-25. Since its launch in 2015, it has grown into a social network of over 25M active users around the world, instigating 10B written messages and 30M live video streams, resulting in over 2B new friendships so far. Its focus is on socialising and creating a secure, digital space for self-expression, where young people can build friend communities – many of which form more than 50km apart – and create live stream discussions, moderated in real-time for safety. Ready to expand its user base even further, Yubo recently turned to TikTok to increase awareness and drive new downloads for the app.

The Solution

To achieve this objective, Yubo used TikTok Ads Manager to set-up and run its own biddable ad campaigns. In this case, the immediate goal was to convert views into downloads.

One of the benefits of using TikTok Ads Manager to create campaigns is that it's cost-effective at reaching vast audiences. Through the TikTok Ads Manager platform, brands can upload their own creative and apply audience targeting, all whilst keeping close control on ad spend. Auction ads are based on bids – the maximum cost per outcome a brand is prepared to pay – within a set budget per day or campaign. TikTok's Ads platform does the rest – finding the most cost-effective way to spend that budget and targeting the right audiences to bring back maximum returns at the lowest cost-per-result.

Looking at the creative Yubo used for its campaign, creators appeared front and centre, giving Yubo's ads a native and authentic feel. It also played on the buzz of adding new friends with Yubo by creating a graphical "notification" video that highlighted the app's purpose: to make new connections. Created in a style we have all come to recognise, it was an easy win in terms of getting the key message across instantly.

The Results

Over the course of the campaign, Yubo generated over 238K app downloads, achieving an impressive 13.3% conversion rate across five markets (UK, US, CA, FR, AU), and proved to be a highly cost-effective outcome. Overall, it's a great example of how a brand has taken advantage of TikTok's ad offerings, optimised for app downloads.