How to Track and Measure TikTok Ad Campaigns for Subscription Apps

TikTok is one of the fastest-growing social media platforms in the world. Currently, it has around 700 million monthly active users and has become the most downloaded non-gaming app worldwide. No wonder it represents an enormous opportunity for advertisers. Let’s find out how to use this platform to maximize your marketing strategy.

Advertising in TikTok

TikTok ads offer a lot of opportunities for marketers because it allows them to find community, make real connections, and be discovered. You may find unique formats and targeting options that can help you access hard-to-reach younger audiences. The continued use of the app by millennials provides an opportunity to expand your online presence and generate more app conversions.

TikTok is also a great platform to promote your mobile products because it’s much less competitive than other established social networks. Buying ads on TikTok will allow you to reach the same audience but at a much lower cost than Facebook and Instagram.

It is also worth noting that in addition to providing a huge audience, TikTok also has a skyrocketing engagement rate. In other words, people use TikTok a lot and very often.

Is TikTok Advertising Right for You

Despite the advantages of TikTok ads, you still need to consider whether this platform suits your audience. Let’s figure out which businesses should invest in advertising on TikTok. According to the TikTok reach rates, TikTok ads will likely have the best results for: 

• Apps marketing to customers 35 and under
• Apps targeted to women, especially those aged 18-25 
• Apps that have a strong presence in Asia or the Middle East or are going to have one. 

Also, you need to keep in mind whether your TikTok audience is successfully converting into app users. This early validation will help you avoid a scenario where you fail to make any money through app downloads or purchases despite a massive audience and high engagement.

How You Can Promote Your App in TikTok

There are several main forms of advertising on TikTok, and each of them can bring value to your app if implemented effectively.

Auction Ads

This form of advertising allows you to bid on ad slots on the social network. These are currently the only self-service style ads available and unlike Google Ads, bidding is done manually.

Biddable ads allow you to bid on video ad placements in the app’s main For You feed

There are several types of auction ads that you can do:

• In-Feed Ads
  These are self-service ads you can create yourself through the TikTok Ads Manager interface.
• Image ads
  Running only in TikTok’s News Feed apps (BuzzVideo, TopBuzz, and Babe), these include an image, brand or app name, and ad text.
• Video ads
  Video ads are available for TikTok itself or for the TikTok family of news apps. They run as 5-60 second full-screen videos in the user’s For You feed. Each ad includes a video, an ad display image, brand or app name, and ad text.
• Spark ads
  Spark ads allow your brand to boost organic content from your own account or from other users. TikTok research shows Spark Ads have a 24% higher completion rate and 142% higher engagement rate than standard In-Feed Ads.
• Pangle ads
  Ads are placed through the TikTok Audience Network.
• Carousel ads
  Running only in TikTok’s News Feed apps, these include up to 10 images with unique captains per ad

Formats That Require a TikTok Account Manager

If you want to go beyond normal video ads, you may use this kind of format. However, these formats require not only bigger budgets, but you also need to work with a TikTok account manager. They can help you manage: 

• TopView ads
  Video ads that appear as a full-screen takeover for 5 to 60 seconds when users open the TikTok app.
• Branded Hashtag Challenge
  A three- to six-day ad campaign format to encourage engagement, in which user-generated content appears on the hashtag challenge page.
• Branded Effects
  Branded stickers, filters, and special effects to get TikTokers interacting with your brand.

Best Practices of App Promotion in TikTok

TikTok is successfully used by numerous apps for their promotion and as a part of their marketing strategy. Successful campaigns bring apps more new users, installs, and raise awareness about apps. Let’s look at some best practices.

Miniclip (8 Ball Pool)

8 Ball Pool is an online multiplayer game where players compete against each other in pool. The main goal of their TikTok campaign was to maximize conversions of their app with a heavy focus on return-on-ad spend and cost control.

Miniclip chose to run a mix of deep funnel solutions such as App Event Optimization and value-based optimization for high levels of in-app purchases. Moreover, they gave credit to their TikTok account management team for the formation of Miniclip’s test and learn strategy. So the brand was able to test traditional gameplay creatives and native creator ads that allowed them to drive the conversation on the platform. It also resulted in leveraging new creative concepts that drove further brand awareness.

Overall, the campaign brought Miniclip more than 8,000 in-app purchases, all while generating a fantastic return on ad spend.

Snoop

Snoop is the UK’s leading money-saving app. They wanted to raise awareness and boost app downloads among a new audience, so they chose to implement an entertaining and engaging In-Feed Ad campaign.

In collaboration with some of the UK’s best-known finance creators, they produce highly productive content that resonated perfectly with their target audience. The ad was set up in TikTok Ads Manager and included product testimony and demonstrations with some humor content. So the brand’s main message was spread and encouraged a huge number of new installs. As a result, it delivered around 77 million impressions, more than 407,500 clicks, and over 55,500 conversions, with a 21.25% conversion rate.

UNDO

UNDO is a Danish start-up based in Copenhagen that provides app-based insurance for drivers nationwide. They came to TikTok to increase app installs and secure more test drives with the ultimate goal of achieving a larger customer base.

In partnership with an agency, they used TikTok Ads manager and generated In-Feed Ads, with an emphasis on the insight that some drivers have little “no claims bonus” and, therefore, pay high insurance fees. The main target audience here was the teenagers and young adults market.

Initially, they made a suite of humorous ads reflecting authentic driving conditions to test and inform their potential target audience about further campaigns. After prepping their audience, they ran In-Feed Ads optimized for conversions and app installs that fit natively in the For You feed. Precise targeting made it possible to capture the target audience exactly when and where it is the most, and the external link allowed the community to continue their learning more about the company after viewing ads. 

As a result, UNDO lowered their cost-per-acquisition by 11x in comparison to other social media channels. Also, they get a conversion rate that is 506% higher than its other platforms and 2.78% better than its previous campaign results.

How to Start Your TikTok Ad Campaign

To run a TikTok ad campaign for an app, you first need to create your app on TikTok Ads and get a TikTok App ID. The App ID is a unique code generated in TikTok Ads Manager. It confirms ownership of your app and unlocks advertising features that allows the advertiser to control data. An important note here is that you only can have one app ID applied to one app and a single app/app ID entity can be created only once in the Event Manager – you can modify it, but you can’t recreate or delete it. 

Then you can proceed with the campaign creation. To create your app TikTok campaign, you need to: 

Choose Your Goal

you can choose from three options: Traffic, Conversions, and App Install

Select Your Audience

Set parameters for location, age, gender, languages, interests, devices, and more to attract the right audience for your ads.

Set Your Budget

You can choose either a daily budget (the amount you’re willing to spend each day) or a total budget (the total amount you’re willing to spend for the duration of the schedule). Note that there’s a $20 minimum for the daily budget and total budget at the ad group level.

Select Your Optimization Goal

You can choose to optimize your ad group for Conversion, Click, or Impression. ​​Next, you need to choose your bidding strategy.

• Bid Cap: Maximum amount per click (CPC), per view (CPV), or per 1,000 impressions (CPM).
• Cost Cap: An average cost per result for optimized CPM. The cost will fluctuate above and below the bid amount but should average out to the set bid.
• Lowest Cost: The ad system uses the ad group budget to generate the maximum number of results possible at the lowest cost per result.

Design Your Ad

TikTok ads can be horizontal, vertical, or square videos and images. Try to create native ads that will look like the TikTok videos. Also, the platform provides you with a great tool for creating videos – the Video Creation Kit.

Optimize Your Campaign

Do not hesitate to use special TikTok tools such as the Landing Page to Video tool and Automated Creative Optimization. The first one will capture high-quality image material from any landing page URL you feed into it and then combine these images with music to automatically generate video ads. The second one lets you upload up to 10 images or five videos, five ad texts, and one call-to-action(CTA) and will then combine your creative assets into multiple ads. It will test a variety of these ads throughout your campaign and ultimately present the best possible combination to your target audience.

How to Track and Measure Your TikTok Campaign

The marketer’s work doesn’t stop after setting up the campaign. To succeed on this platform, you also need to monitor your results. 

TikTok Ads Manager provides you with the most basic metrics to track and gives you an understanding of the effectiveness of your campaigns. Moreover, when you set your App ID, TikTok Ads Manager will automatically identify the app vertical and show you recommended in-app events.

There are two types of results that you can view in TikTok Ads Manager. 

1. The macro picture is displayed on the dashboards. Dashboards show the overall data across all campaigns. 
2. If you want to get more precise data, go to the Campaign page. There you may find the results of your campaigns as well as accumulated data about ad groups and particular ads. 

Let’s take a look at each of these types.

Dashboards

The dashboard is where you stop first in TikTok Ads Manager. All the broad information about your campaigns such as charts on trends, placements, and spending is placed here. Here are some tips for working with dashboards:

• With dashboards, you can monitor all the actions that were taken over time as a given campaign was managed. To find this operation log, you need to proceed to Today’s Spends area, where is log button is located. 
• Moreover, here you may view the status of all campaigns, ad groups, and particular ads. They can have either Active or Not Delivering status. Active status means that your campaign or ad or ad group is currently shown in the TikTok feed, and Not Delivering means that it stopped or paused. 
• You can also find an App Event dashboard where all apps associated with your account will be presented. To add it, you can go to Assets > Event > Click on your App. Here you can see overall in-app events, event recovery status, and set event statistic methods.
• The time zone selection box allows you to track your account time zone. But keep in mind that all the data that you see is based on your current time zone. 
• To view your performance metrics in a more structured way, you may break them down into several dimensions such as gender, OS, dayparting, etc. 
• Finally, the platform allows you to download and export this data so that you can have more precise analysis and editing. 

Campaign

On the campaign page, you can get more detailed results for campaigns, ad groups, and ads. Here is what you need to know when filtering, customizing, and viewing your data.

Filter Your Campaigns

For your convenience, when working with numerous campaigns, you may use the filter option. To do so you need to click the filter button and select from different criteria in the drop-down menu to drill down and find the specific campaigns you’re looking for. Also, you can change, combine multiple criteria, and save your personal customized filters for easy access. 

Customize Your Data View

If you want to change the basic layout and adapt it for your personal needs, you may customize columns. Click on the Custom column button and select all the relevant data. Then, you may drag and drop to change the columns’ order of appearance. You also can save this setting for easy access next time.

Viewing Your Data

To view your performance data and audience analysis, you may click the View data button. You can find it under each campaign, ad group, or ad. The panel will open and allow you to create changes about dates and periods.

Then you can change your chart display. If you select some dimensions, you’ll see a chart showing you data like total cost, impressions, clicks, conversions, click rate, CPC, CPM, and conversion cost. 

If you click on the Breakdown tab, you’ll see the performance data, which can be divided into audience segments such as gender, age, country/area, interest, network, OS, and placement. 

How to Measure Your TikTok Campaigns for Subscription Apps 

For more accurate information about in-app events, TikTok recommends you attribute your TikTok account to a third-party Mobile Measurement Partner (MMP). Those who follow deep-dive analytics will most likely track these metrics using platforms like Adjust, Appsflyer, Branch, etc. However, even with them, it’s very difficult to see the effectiveness of campaigns since there are no in-app tracking events. Therefore, for subscription applications, it’s recommended to use these sites together with Qonversion.

Qonversion can integrate with MMPs to provide you with more detailed information about your marketing attribution related to subscription apps. You will get access to metrics such as installs, trials, conversions per purchase, and revenue. With integration with your analytics platform, you’ll get comprehensive insights into your app marketing strategy. Read our documentation to learn more how to install integrations

Conclusion

As you can see, TikTok can increase your brand awareness and attract more people to download your app. Marketing is moving at a very high speed, and companies that can’t move with it could find themselves behind their competitors. For apps looking to reach new audiences and increase awareness, this means taking advantage of everything the latest social media platforms have to offer, and TikTok is well on its way to becoming the most popular platform in the near future. 

At Qonversion, we understand how important it is to know how budgets are allocated to campaigns, how and where your marketing dollars are going, and how well an individual campaign is performing. If you want to access the most accurate subscription app data, Qonversion is here to help.