From creative direction to bidding strategies, the success of TikTok advertising campaigns hinges on audience targeting. When advertisers can display their TikTok ads to the intended audience, the results will certainly align with their marketing objectives. Today, let’s explore a case study of a gaming product to see how TikTok utilizes targeting technology to help advertisers achieve their marketing goals!
Marketing Goal: Accumulate Pre-registrations and Installations

VicGame Studios is a Korean game developer founded in 2020, specializing in RPG games featuring anime characters. They recently launched a new game, “Black Clover Mobile,” incorporating the popular Japanese anime into their IP. VicGame aims to leverage the game’s IP to attract more pre-registrations and installations, thereby climbing the ranks of the Korean and Japanese App Store/Play Store.
TikTok for Business Solution: Retargeting the Right Audience to Expand Marketing Campaigns
Reaching the top of the charts means balancing a high budget for TikTok marketing campaigns while avoiding a spike in CPI. With this in mind, VicGames partnered with TikTok’s measurement marketing partner to utilize its dashboard throughout the campaign lifecycle—from app promotion and pre-registration campaigns to the launch of the campaign.
Firstly, VicGames utilized Smart Performance Campaigns (SPC) to maintain a low CPI. SPC allows advertisers like VicGames to use powerful AI/ML capabilities to activate end-to-end marketing campaign automation on TikTok Ads Manager (TTAM) to achieve their marketing goals. VicGames only needed to provide their marketing objectives, budget over a period, and necessary creative assets (videos, images, text, CTA, cards). By leveraging SPC, VicGames was able to double the campaign budget while running app install and SPC campaigns simultaneously, avoiding competition between ads.

Secondly, VicGames used the lookalike audience tool provided by the mobile attribution and marketing analytics platform. As the campaign continued through the pre-registration and launch phases, VicGames could leverage their pre-registered audience within the game and create similar audiences on TTAM to target these users during the campaign launch.
Marketing Success: Lowering CPI with the Right Target Audience
By combining tools from the mobile attribution and marketing analytics platform, VicGames could measure their mobile app conversion rates and the engagement of existing app users. This allowed them to drive as many install conversions as possible while avoiding a spike in CPI. Within the first week of the new game “Black Clover Mobile” launching on the Google Play Store, it ranked seventh on the revenue charts, with a 6.8x increase in Return on Ad Spend (ROAS). Additionally, by leveraging lookalike audiences and SPC campaigns, VicGames was able to reduce CPI by 30%, achieve a 9.8% conversion rate, and record over 670 “completed payment” events.
TikTok is Becoming the Go-To Platform for Advertisers to Reach Gamers
As gaming has shifted from a niche interest to a popular mainstream activity, marketers have a significant opportunity to build cultural relevance and drive business outcomes by advertising to gamers. TikTok is a crucial platform for achieving this goal: in 2022, half of the daily active users watched some form of gaming content.
If you are considering joining TikTok’s gaming community, here are three things you must know:
- The Gaming Audience is Your Audience Gaming is no longer a niche hobby; from mobile games to console games to PC games, playing video games is a mainstream passion. Gaming culture has spread into almost every other area of mainstream culture. This has given rise to a variety of different personas: fashion enthusiasts are gamers, “foodies” are gamers, car enthusiasts, techies, fitness fanatics, or beauty bloggers, etc. And this audience is only growing.
- TikTok is Where Gaming, Culture, and Entertainment Collide The gaming audience is building their own community, interacting with brands, being influenced by content on TikTok, and taking action. Here, advertisers can build a fan culture around their brand through the intersection of gaming, culture, and entertainment.
- Brands Are Already Trying and Succeeding Some are creating for large audiences on the For You page, streaming live on LIVE, and building genuine communities through the platform, while gamers are responding and taking action. After all, TikTok’s audience is content-driven and influenced. This is what keeps the platform highly relevant.