Case study/Manta
A webcomic finds its ideal audience in a million-dollar campaign
A Conduit case studyThe strategy
A webcomic audience is not one audience, it is a dozen overlapping fandoms who found the same story from different directions. The team built lookalike audiences off existing readers on Meta and TikTok, then tested distinct creative against each segment rather than running one ad everywhere and hoping it landed.
The TikTok hashtag challenge and branded effect were built to let fans make the content themselves, since a webcomic’s most persuasive marketing is always a fan explaining why they are obsessed, not a brand explaining it for them. Paid media got that content in front of people who had never heard of the series yet.
The goals
- ★
Target audiences with similar interests across social and search, and find which were most efficient to reach and engage per platform.
- ★
Test creatives and identify which ones resonated with each distinct audience.
- ★
Maximize reach and awareness for the new season of their most-read webcomic.
“Their most-read webcomic has a grip on my soul. Every time I get the ads for it, I’m a total wreck.”
The numbers landed
- $1,227,560
- Spend
- 11,822,604
- Impressions
- 772,858
- Views
- $0.10
- Cost per view
Highlights
Over $1MM paid advertising to drive awareness and downloads
Multiple brand-lift studies on YouTube and Meta
TikTok hashtag challenge and branded effect
Boosted influencer campaigns
Media mix
- TikTok
- Snapchat
- X
- YouTube
- App networks
The challenge
No benchmarks, six segments, three continents
Manta had no historical cost-per-thousand, return, or conversion data to anchor against. Every decision had to be made live, with structured testing standing in for the history that did not exist.
Six audience segments were replicated across six platforms, which is an operational problem before it is a media one: keeping them standardized without losing granularity. Teams coordinated across Eastern, Pacific, and Korea Standard Time, and the primary agency contact departed partway through the campaign without a break in delivery.
The structure
Full funnel across eight platforms
- Top of funnel: mass awarenessFacebook, Instagram, TikTok in-feed, Snapchat, Twitter, and YouTube carrying reach at the widest point of the launch.
- Cultural activation: TikTok native formatsA Hashtag Challenge built around #WhenRiftanSays plus a Branded Effect, amplified by influencers, which turned the audience into participants rather than viewers.
- Bottom of funnel: conversion captureGoogle Search and ironSource targeting high-intent audiences and optimizing toward app installs.
The cultural engine
What the TikTok activation returned
- Video views through the Hashtag Challenge
- 3B
20% above benchmark across all ad products.
- People reached
- 184M
Reach from the Hashtag Challenge alone.
- User-generated videos
- 1.5M
50% above benchmark, from an audience creating rather than watching.
- Branded Effect impressions
- 39M
11M video views, 38% above benchmark on views.
The Hashtag Challenge produced 1.5 million user-generated videos, 50% above benchmark, at a 14.7% engagement rate. The Branded Effect drove 29,000 video creations, 263% above benchmark.
Creative intelligence
Five things the campaign data settled
- The season trailer beat everything elseIt ranked top three for engagement in every audience segment tested. Story-driven creative outperformed every brand-produced alternative.
- Shorter cuts improved cost per viewCutdowns under 30 seconds consistently beat full-length versions on cost per view, which makes short-form the lead format for the next campaign.
- Music-led creative opened a new segmentA previously untargeted music-affinity audience responded strongly, which is a new acquisition segment rather than a creative note.
- YouTube is the depth channelSession durations there ran four to eight times longer than any other platform, confirming where deep content engagement actually happens.
- Snapchat and TikTok are the reach channelsA $2.53 cost per thousand and $0.82 cost per click established both as the efficient options for mass awareness.
What carried the result
Three things worth taking from this launch
- Native formats activate, they do not just reachHashtag Challenges and Branded Effects recruit the audience as co-creators, which is why they belong at the center of an entertainment launch rather than at the edge of it.
- Match the platform to the jobSnapchat and TikTok for reach, YouTube for engagement depth. Treating platforms as interchangeable is what wastes budget at this scale.
- Coordinate influencer and paid timingReleasing influencer content in step with paid amplification created a feedback loop that neither produced on its own.
