Your Guide to TikTok Ads for Game Marketing and UA

TikTok has rapidly transformed into a powerful platform for game marketing, offering unique opportunities to engage audiences through compelling and interactive ad formats. With its continuously expanding user base and innovative creative tools, TikTok has become essential for game marketers and digital marketing agencies. This article dives into effective tips, tricks, and insights to help you harness the potential of TikTok ads, focusing on the platform’s unique ad types and user acquisition strategies for game developers.

Know Your Audience: Prioritize Engagement Over Impressions

TikTok users are accustomed to scrolling quickly through endless, short-form videos. To succeed, you need to understand your audience’s interests and preferences, capturing their attention within the first few seconds. TikTok’s audience thrives on interactive, authentic content, so ads that resemble organic posts tend to perform best. When you understand what engages your audience, you can create content that keeps viewers watching and interacting.

For game marketers, this might mean showcasing captivating gameplay moments, engaging characters, or intriguing storylines. For example, starting with an action-packed scene or highlighting a unique feature can set your game apart. Remember, TikTok ads flourish on engagement – each like, comment, and share helps the algorithm push your content to more users.

Maximize TikTok Ads Manager for Data-Driven Campaigns

TikTok Ads Manager is a valuable resource for digital marketing agencies and game developers, offering tools to monitor, measure, and optimize ad performance. It allows you to set campaign objectives, such as awareness, consideration, or conversion, which align with your business goals. If you’re aiming to drive traffic, for instance, choose a specific traffic objective, while a reach objective might be more effective for brand awareness.

Key Steps for Success in TikTok Ads Manager

• Set a Realistic Ad Budget
  Allocate your budget wisely using smart bidding strategies, such as CPM (cost per thousand impressions), oCPM (optimized CPM), or CPV (cost per view). Additionally, campaign budgets help you control ad delivery, measure results, and optimize your marketing spend in the Budget & Schedule section.
• Identify Your Audience
  To create truly resonant campaigns, use TikTok Ads Manager’s robust targeting options. You can build custom audiences, exclude lookalike audiences, and narrow down your demographics by age, gender, interests, and even device type, ensuring your ads reach the right people.
• Use Split Testing to Optimize
  A/B testing, or split testing, is a valuable feature in TikTok Ads Manager that enables you to compare two ad versions to identify the most effective approach. You can test key variables such as Targeting, Bidding and Optimization, and Creative. This quick and accurate comparison helps you refine strategies and maximize your return on investment.
• Analyze Performance and Adjust Accordingly
  TikTok Ads Manager’s reporting tools provide insights into metrics like click-through rates, conversion rates, and user demographics. Studying this data can reveal which creative assets resonate most with your audience, allowing you to tailor future content based on proven success.

TikTok Creative Challenge: Choose the Right Ad Format

1. Choosing the right ad format is key.
TikTok ads can last from 5 to 60 seconds, but most effective ads capture attention within the first three seconds. Use standard video sizes like Vertical (9:16), Square (1:1), and Horizontal (16:9), although vertical TikTok ads generally perform best.

2. Maintain Visual Consistency.
Ensure that your ad’s caption, text, images, and CTA align with the promoted product or service on the landing page. This consistency creates a smoother user experience and builds trust with your audience.

3. Get Creative and Stay Authentic.
To capture attention, create authentic, entertaining content that aligns with TikTok trends. Using trending sounds, challenges, or relatable themes can help your ad blend into the feed naturally, enhancing engagement.

4. Try Smart Creative for High-Performing Combinations.
TikTok’s Smart Creative feature combines images, videos, and ad text into various combinations, displaying only the high-performing versions. This automated approach helps reduce ad fatigue and keeps your campaign fresh and effective.

5. Include a Strong Call to Action (CTA)
A CTA is crucial for any TikTok advertising campaign. Placing it at the end of your video maximizes engagement, driving users to take the next step.

How Smart Creative Works

• Creative Asset Combination: Combines videos/images, text, and CTAs to create multiple ad variations.
• Creative Selection: Prioritizes diverse videos based on scene similarity, monitoring their performance over 3-5 days.
• Anti-Creative Fatigue: Pauses ads showing signs of fatigue and introduces fresh content, maximizing budget efficiency.

Experiment with TikTok’s Diverse Ad Formats

TikTok offers multiple ad formats through Ads Manager, each catering to different objectives and audience interactions.

In-Feed Ad placement:

• In-Feed Ads: Appear in users’ “For You” feeds, providing an opportunity to reach highly engaged users.
• TopView Ads: High-impact ads shown when users open TikTok. TopView Ads are full-screen, sound-on, and great for brand awareness.
• Branded Mission: Connects brands with TikTok creators who are incentivized to create unique video content, fostering authentic engagement.
• Spark Ads: Allows brands to use organic TikTok posts in their advertising, maintaining a native feel and enhancing authenticity.
• Playable Ads: Interactive ads offering users a preview of your app before downloading, ideal for game promotions.
• Carousel Ads: An image-based ad format where users can swipe between images at their own pace.

Non-Feed Ad Placement:

The Search Ads Toggle lets you extend in-feed ads to TikTok’s search results page, broadening reach and visibility. TikTok Messaging Ads, which allow direct conversations between users and businesses, are also in testing in some regions.

What’s Next?

TikTok advertising presents an exciting opportunity for game marketers to reach a massive, engaged audience. By leveraging TikTok’s diverse ad formats, tapping into trends, and focusing on authentic, engaging content, SuperFaction team can craft authentic UA cretive and TikTok ad campaigns that drive installs and foster brand loyalty. As your digital marketing agency and game growth partner, SuperFaction can enhance your ad strategies by creating TikTok native ads that stand out and resonate with the audience.

With the right approach, TikTok can become a powerful tool in any game marketer’s arsenal, unlocking new levels of user engagement and acquisition for long-term growth.

Reach out to our expert team of UA creative marketers to reach a massive TikTok audience with ads that work!