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Advertising on TikTok

If you still think TikTok is just for kids, you’re missing out on an important social media advertising option for your brand.

TikTok surpassed 1 billion users in September, and TikTok ads can now reach an estimated adult (18+) audience of 825 million people worldwide.

If you’re marketing to younger adults, especially women, advertising on TikTok is a natural fit. Almost half (43%) of TikTok users are aged 18 to 24. Women in that age category make up nearly a quarter (24.7%) of TikTok’s advertising audience.

TikTok’s largest audience is in the United States at 120,768,500 people. But what’s more interesting is the percentage of the adult population TikTok ads can reach in countries outside of North America, especially the Middle East and Asia.

If you’re marketing to an international audience, ads on TikTok offer excellent reach.

So, who should invest in advertising on TikTok? While brands with a wide range of audiences may find it worthwhile to test a small TikTok campaign, TikTok ads will likely have the best results for:

  • Brands marketing to customers 35 and under
  • Brands targeting women, especially those aged 18 to 25
  • Brands with (or hoping to build) a strong presence in Asia or the Middle East

 

 

Types of Ads

Here are all the kinds of ads you can run on TikTok’s ad platform and its family of apps. Not all ad types are available in all areas. Check out the TikTok ad specs for all formats further on in this post.

In-feed ads

These are self-service ads you can create yourself through the TikTok Ad 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 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.

 

 

How to set up a TikTok ad campaign

To set up a TikTok ad campaign, just head over to TikTok Ads Manager. If you haven’t created a TikTok Ads Manager account, you’ll need to do that first.

Note: If you’re just looking to boost existing content, you don’t need an Ads Manager account. Instead, you can use TikTok Promote. Skip to the end of this section for more details.

1. Choose your objective

To get started, log into TikTok Ads Manager and click the Campaign button. TikTok has seven ad objectives broken down into three categories:

Awareness

  • Reach: Show your ad to the maximum number of people (in beta).

Consideration

  • Traffic: Drive traffic to a specific URL.
  • App Installs: Drive traffic to download your app.
  • Video Views: Maximize video ad plays (in beta).
  • Lead Generation: Use a pre-populated Instant Form to collect leads.

Conversions

  • Conversions: Drive specific actions on your site, like a purchase or subscription.
  • Catalog Sales: Dynamic ads based on your product catalog (in beta, and only available to those with a managed ad account in supported regions).

 

2. Name your campaign and set a budget

Give your campaign a name that is easily recognizable to your team. It can be up to 512 characters.

If you have bottomless pockets or prefer to set the budget limits for specific ad groups rather than the whole campaign, you can choose to set No Limit on your campaign budget. Otherwise, choose whether you want to set a Daily or Lifetime budget for your campaign.

 

3. Name your ad group and select placements

Each campaign includes from one to 999 ad groups. Each ad group name can be up to 512 characters.

You can choose different placements for each ad group. Not all placements are available in all locations:

  • TikTok placement: In-feed ads in the For You feed.
  • News Feed App placement: Ads within TikTok’s other apps—BuzzVideo, TopBuzz, NewsRepublic, and Babe.
  • Pangle placement: The TikTok audience network.
  • Automatic placement allows TikTok to automatically optimize ad delivery.

 

4. Choose whether to use Automated Creative Optimization

You won’t upload your creative until you get to the stage of creating individual ads. But for now, you can decide whether to let TikTok automatically generate combinations of your images, videos, and ad text. The ad system will then only show the best-performing ones.

TikTok recommends that new advertisers turn this setting on.

 

5. Target your audience

Like most social ads, TikTok allows you to show your ads specifically to your target market. You can use a lookalike or custom audience, or target your ads based on:

  • Gender
  • Age
  • Location
  • Language
  • Interests
  • Behaviours
  • Device details

 

6. Set your ad group budget and schedule

You’ve already set a budget for your overall campaign. Now it’s time to set the budget for the ad group, and to set the schedule on which it will run.

Choose a daily or lifetime budget for your ad group, then choose the start and end times. Under Dayparting, you can also choose to run your ad at specific times throughout the day (based on your account time zone).

 

7. Set your bidding strategy and optimization

First, choose your optimization goal: conversion, clicks, or reach. Your campaign objective may automatically determine this goal.

Next, 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.

 

8. Create your ad(s)

Each ad group can have up to 20 ads. Each ad name can be up to 512 characters, and is for internal use only (it does not appear on the ad itself).

First, choose your ad format: image, video, or Spark ad. If you’re sticking to TikTok itself (rather than the family of TikTok apps), you can only use video or Spark ads.

Add your photos or video, or create a video within Ads Manager using the video template or video creation tools. Note that TikTok research shows using the TikTok video editor can decrease cost per action by up to 46%.

Choose one of the default thumbnails, or upload your own. Then, enter your text and link. Check out the preview of your ad on the right of the screen, add any relevant tracking links, and click Submit.

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