TikTok campaign planning and optimization powered by alpaka’s Hashtag & Tribe Intelligence.
August 24, 2026
FreakOut, Inc. (Headquarters: Minato-ku, Tokyo; Representative Director: Keiji Tokiyoshi; hereinafter “FreakOut”) has officially earned the “Agency” badge under the TikTok Marketing Partners program.
As of August 2026, FreakOut is one of only 13 agencies in Japan holding the badge* and is now listed in TikTok’s official Partner Directory in recognition of its expertise and track record in TikTok advertising.
*Based on FreakOut research using TikTok’s official Partner Directory as of August 20, 2026.
View FreakOut’s listing in TikTok’s official Partner Directory:
https://partners.tiktok.com/partner-details/7670090887271022608/pc/en
TikTok Marketing Partners is a global program that recognizes companies with demonstrated expertise and proven capabilities across specialized areas including agency services, creative, measurement and technology.
Within the program, the “Agency” badge recognizes advertising agencies with proven expertise and experience in TikTok campaign management and operations.
As a certified Agency partner, FreakOut supports advertisers across the TikTok campaign journey with:
As short-form video continues to grow, more companies are using TikTok year after year. At the same time, demographic targeting based on factors such as age and gender alone does not always capture the increasingly diverse interests and preferences of users.
In a January 2026 survey of 874 TikTok users conducted by FreakOut, 66.6% of respondents said they would “have a favorable impression of a brand” when an ad aligned with their specific interests or the communities around those interests.
The findings suggest that relevance matters. Rather than advertising itself, users may be less receptive to messages that feel disconnected from the interests and contexts that matter to them. Understanding these interest-based communities can therefore play an important role in building positive brand sentiment.
FreakOut has consistently built its TikTok campaign design and operations around understanding these interest-based communities and applying that understanding to advertising. The Agency badge reflects the company’s continued work in this area.
FreakOut’s alpaka is a Hashtag & Tribe Intelligence solution, powered by AI Agentic Technology for TikTok.
TikTok users often form smaller communities around shared interests, ideas, hashtags, memes, trends and languages. In alpaka, FreakOut refers to these interest-based communities as “Tribes.”
By analyzing user behavior and hashtag signals, alpaka identifies relevant communities and the audiences actively engaging with them. It also draws on short-form video casting data to inform creative and delivery strategies based on the context of different communities.
A key differentiator lies in how audiences are selected. For each product or brand, alpaka identifies which communities are active and which content is most relevant within them, then uses recent engagement signals to reach users who are actively responding to that content.
Rather than relying only on demographic attributes such as age and gender, alpaka uses hashtags as a key signal to identify audiences actively engaging with relevant topics. Its hashtag targeting can reach users who have engaged with content featuring specific hashtags within the last seven days, helping brands connect with active, engaged audiences while their interest is still fresh.
Within the FreakOut Holdings group, FreakOut also has dedicated capabilities for creator-led production and vertical short-form video development. This allows creative development and media delivery to be managed more seamlessly as part of the same TikTok campaign process.
As a certified TikTok Agency partner, FreakOut will continue to pursue greater advertising effectiveness and product development grounded in its understanding of interest-based communities.
Explore alpaka’s capabilities and see how its Hashtag & Tribe Intelligence helps brands reach active TikTok audiences.
Building on one of Japan’s largest pools of advertising inventory and data, FreakOut develops and provides marketing solutions including the marketing platform Red, location-based marketing platform ASE, social media AI agent HAWK, and AI-powered product alpaka.
Through precise targeting across formats including display, native, video and CTV, High Impact and DOOH, FreakOut supports businesses in addressing a wide range of marketing challenges. The company also helps businesses build proprietary advertising infrastructure based on their individual needs.
Since its founding, FreakOut has maintained a strong focus on transparency and ad fraud prevention while working toward advertising environments that audiences can trust. The company continues to pursue its goal of transforming advertising from an interruption into an opportunity to discover useful and relevant information.
FreakOut, Inc.
Contact: Matsuno
E-mail: alpaka@fout.jp
