Test with TikTok: How gaming companies drive their marketing objectives with TikTok

1 April 2022

TikTok For Business

InsightsBest Practices

Test With TikTok is all about inspiring advertisers across Southeast Asia (SEA) to achieve more with TikTok For Business solutions. This way, you can focus on designing and developing campaigns exactly the way you want, while TikTok helps improve campaign performance. Our solutions deliver leading returns on investment, and they even prime audiences for your advertising on other platforms too. So, we'll be offering tips and tricks for boosting your brand, driving sales, and growing your business on TikTok.

Advertisers of core games and hyper-casual games tend to have different campaign objectives and experience different challenges. However, both groups have successfully worked with TikTok, identifying optimal strategies for achieving their marketing objectives on our platform. The key is being open to experimentation.

We took a look at how some of these brands leveraged TikTok solutions to achieve a range of campaign objectives. Based on the results of their test campaigns, we've put together four best-practice tips and tricks.

Consider the following when planning your next TikTok ad campaign for mobile games:

Thai Co 2 Mobile is a role-playing game (RPG) title published by Funtap in the Vietnam market. With the objective of improving return on ad spend for in-app purchases, Funtap turned to TikTok to try out our Value-Based Optimization ad feature. Using the Minimum ROAS bidding strategy, the system finds the highest-value customers while meeting or exceeding a specific return on ad spend target. This strategy shows the brand's ads to audience groups who are more likely to purchase in-app items and spend higher amounts, giving marketers greater control over the purchase value generated from their ads.

The hypothesis was that Value-Based Optimization increases the value of each purchase and overall return on ad spend, compared to App Event Optimization campaigns that optimize to reach users who are likely to trigger a purchase event. To validate this hypothesis, Funtap set up the campaign for both Value-Based Optimization and App Event Optimization to compare the campaign's result.

Over the seven days of testing, the Value-Based Optimization campaign efficiently optimized for higher-value customers, achieving a 20% higher purchase value, while controlling cost per purchase. As a result, overall return on ad spend for the Value-Based Optimization test group exceeded the campaign target, and achieved 18% higher return on ad spend compared to the campaign using App Event Optimization for Purchase Event.

Cloud Song is an RPG from VNG Game Studios. The campaign objective was to increase return on ad spend by optimizing cost per purchase. VNG chose to run an A/B test on TikTok across five countries in SEA. It wanted to compare the results of campaigns with Mobile App Install and App Event Optimization strategies, to uncover the best way to optimize for purchase events.

The test hypothesis was that using App Event Optimization optimizes for purchase events, while also controlling the campaign's cost per purchase. VNG set up an A/B test, creating two variations of its campaign. Both campaigns had the same schedule, creatives, budget, and targeting. The only variable was the optimization goal. The test group used App Event Optimization to optimize for purchases, while the control group used the Mobile App Install objective to optimize for installs.

The App Event Optimization campaign reduced cost per purchase by 92% and had 9x more paying users, indicating this ad feature reaches users with a higher probability of triggering valuable in-app events. Based on this test, VNG identified that App Event Optimization is the better option for advertisers who want to optimize for purchase events, and to control cost per purchase.

Magic Tiles 3 is a casual music game from Amanotes, and was experiencing a higher cost per install for its iOS14 dedicated campaigns. Amanotes decided to work with TikTok to test the App Profile Page feature. This native, fast-loading instant page offers users an enriching experience with highly relevant app info, bridging between TikTok and the App Store. The goal is to drive better conversions for iOS14 through the collection of more onsite signals.

The hypothesis was that campaigns that leverage App Profile Pages achieve their KPIs more efficiently compared to campaigns without App Profile Pages. To test this out, Amanotes set up an A/B test, creating two variations of its campaign. Both campaigns had the same schedule, bid type, bid, and creatives. The only variable was the landing page, with one campaign directing users to the instant page, and the other to the App Store page.

Instead of retaining App Store visuals and descriptions, Amanotes customized the information on its instant page to increase the relevancy for TikTok users in different regions, aiming to achieve higher conversion rates.

Over the seven days of testing, Amanotes achieved a 36% lower cost per install in the campaign using the customized App Profile Page. In addition, the campaign achieved a 1.56x higher conversion volume with a 31% higher conversion rate. These results proved that collection of onsite signals and customized content on the App Profile Page increased the relevancy of the information for TikTok users, driving a notable improvement in conversions for this iOS 14 dedicated campaign.

Fidget Toys 3D is a hyper-casual game title developed by Fidget Dev. The title has been scaling up massively with playable ads on Pangle in the past few months. Based on learnings from the strong performance of its campaigns on Pangle, Fidget Dev partnered with us to test out playable ads on TikTok. The aim was to improve the click-through rate, conversion rate, cost per install, and day 1 retention rate of its campaigns.

The hypothesis was that TikTok playable ads would achieve campaign KPIs more efficiently than normal video ads. Fidget Dev set up an A/B test, creating two variations of its campaign. Both campaigns had the same schedule, bid type, bid, and targeting. The only variable was the creatives.

The test group with playable ads achieved a 16% higher click-through rate and 5% lower cost per install. These results indicate that playable ads enhance the performance of creatives by triggering more user interactions on the platform. Taking a closer look at the quality of acquisitions made by playable ads, the day 1 retention rate was 5% higher than the control group (without playable ads), leading to a 5% improvement in return on ad spend.

As demonstrated in the above examples, TikTok's range of innovative ad features and strategies enable advertisers to achieve the specific targets of each individual campaign. TikTok's suite of marketing solutions are built for businesses of all sizes, and drive real-world business results.

Stay tuned for more updates and advice from Test With TikTok.

Read the previous Test With TikTok blogposthere.

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