Advertising on TikTok

TikTok has a billion monthly active users globally which makes it a perfect platform to showcase your products to target audience.

You can promote your products with one of several native in-feed ad formats. It’s a full-screen immersive ad that auto-plays in your audience feed. You can add different Call To Action (CTA) buttons to your ad posts like “Shop Now”, “Order Now”, or “Visit Store”. After tapping the button, a customer will be redirected to your website to proceed with checkout.

You can create, manage and optimize your ad in the all-in-one platform called TikTok For Business. It has different tools to control the whole process of creating ads including Business Center, Ad Account, and Store Manager where your catalog is displayed. You can also run the simplified version of TikTok Ad Account to set up your ad campaign.

To start advertising on TikTok, you need to connect your online store’s catalog to TikTok For Business. All ads are created and managed in your TikTok For Business account, not in your store admin. You also will have TikTok Pixel installed in your store to help you optimize your marketing campaigns.

Requirements for advertising on TikTok

To start advertising on TikTok, you need to meet a few requirements:

1. To use TikTok For Business and run ads your store must be located in one of the following countries and your store currency must be one specified near the country: Australia (AUD or USD), Canada (CAD, USD), Egypt (EGP, USD), France (Euro, USD, GBP), Germany (Euro, USD, GBP), Indonesia (IDR, USD), Israel (USD), Italy (Euro, USD, GBP), Japan (JPY, USD), Malaysia (MYR or USD), Saudi Arabia (SAR, USD), Singapore (SGD, USD), South Korea (KRW, USD), Spain (Euro, USD, GBP), Taiwan (TWD or USD), Thailand (THB or USD), Turkey (TRY, USD), United Arab Emirates (AED, USD), United Kingdom (GBP, Euro, USD), United States  (USD, Euro, GBP), Vietnam (VND, USD)
2. You need to have a professional account on TikTok — you can switch to a Pro account in a few clicks; it’s absolutely free. With a Pro account, you can include links to your online store or other social media accounts within your bio (profile).
3. You need to have a TikTok For Business account. If you don’t have one, you can create it while connecting your store to TikTok.
4. The ad you create on TikTok should comply with TikTok advertising policies.

TikTok ad formats

TikTok has several different ad formats, you can choose any of them that fits you the most. You can promote a certain item, showcase several products at once in one video, create videos with product links, and many more. TikTok Ads Manager supports both image ad and video ad formats. You can also use your own TikTok account's posts, or use organic posts made by other creators - with their authorization.

Promote

A lightweight self-serve advertising tool in the TikTok app (does not require a TikTok Ads Manager Account), enabling you to boost your content quickly and straightforwardly.

With Promote, you can turn any organic TikTok video into an ad, directly within the app. You can start reaching new audiences, build a following, and drive traffic to your business website.

Learn more about how to promote your posts on TikTok →

Spark Ads

A native ad format focused on leveraging organic TikTok posts and its features in their advertising. This unique format lets you publish ads using your own TikTok account's posts or organic posts made by other creators with their authorization. You can add CTA buttons for customers to tap. Customers can also tap anywhere on the video to be redirected to your TikTok profile. Therefore, you will gain organic traffic to your profile.

In TikTok Help Center, you can find out more about creating Spark Ads →

Lead Generation

Lead Generation allows you to capture high quality leads with contact forms. When someone taps the CTA button in your in-feed video ad, they will see a popup instant form to populate.

In TikTok Help Center, you can find out more about creating Lead Generation Ads →

Collection Ads

In-feed video ad that leads your customers to an Instant Gallery Page, where they can browse a curated collection of your products without leaving the app. You can either handpick the products to feature in your Instant Gallery Page or let TikTok Ads Manager dynamically display the most relevant products for each visitor. Collection Ads enables people to seamlessly find, discover and browse products in a full-screen mobile experience. Please note that this format is currently testing and may not be available for some users.

In TikTok Help Center, you can find out more about creating Collection Ads →

Catalog Sales Objective Ads (for US and Indonesia only)

Catalog Sales is a type of campaign that allows you to show ads featuring specific products to people who have expressed interest in them on your app or website. This is a great solution if you have a large number of products and want to deliver personalized ads to their prospective customers.

In TikTok Help Center, you can find out more about creating Catalog Sales Objective Ads →

Connecting your catalog to TikTok

To start advertising you need to connect your online catalog to your TikTok For Business account so that your catalog appears in your TikTok Business Center. If you don’t have a TikTok For Business account, it can be created while connecting your store to TikTok.

TikTok will use your store’s country and currency settings and its web address to create an Ad Account and Catalog. It can’t be changed once you connect your catalog to TikTok so if you need to make any changes to your store’s address, country or currency, please do it prior to connecting your store to TikTok. You can adjust these settings in your store admin.

To connect your store to your TikTok For Business account:

1. From your store admin, go to the TikTok page.
2. Specify your personal mobile phone number in the Phone number for TikTok Business Tools field. The phone number is required to create a TikTok Ad Account. It also lets you change the password and protect your account:
   

   

3. Click + Connect TikTok Account.
4. Log in to your TikTok For Business account (not your TikTok account), then click Connect. If you don’t have an account yet, click Sign Up in the right upper corner to create one.
5. Follow the wizard to complete the connection.
   If you use an ad blocker extension, turn it off. Otherwise, it can block you from finishing the connection.

Done. Now TikTok will start reviewing your products. It may take up to several hours. You can check out the status of products in the Products on TikTok section on the TikTok page in your store admin.

Once your products are approved, you will see the catalog in the Store Manager.

Creating ad campaign

Depending on your marketing experience, you can choose between a simplified way of creating ads and a fully customizable ad campaign creation.

For beginners. You can start with a light version of TikTok Ads Manager that you can reach from your store admin. It is a simplified experience for creating an ad campaign in no time. It’s easy to set up, supports the most popular ad campaign format—conversion campaign, and allows you to use TikTok creative tools.

For pros. For the full marketing experience, go to your TikTok Ads Manager (that can be done from your store admin) and get the full control experience on setting up an ad. TikTok Ads Manager has no limitations on campaign objectives and ad creation tools.

Make sure you add payment information on TikTok Ads Manager before you get started with either of ways of creating an ad.

To create an ad campaign:

1. Connect your store to TikTok.
2. From your store admin, go to the TikTok page.
3. Scroll down to TikTok Ads and click Create Ad Campaign to open the simplified mode of ad creation. Click Go to Ad Account to open the regular TikTok Ads Manager.
4. You will be redirected to the ad creation page.
5. Set up your campaign.
6. Click Submit.

That’s it. Now TikTok will review your ad campaign, because it needs to be approved before it starts running. The review may take up to 24 hours.

Appealing an account suspension

All stores that sell on TikTok must comply with TikTok Advertising and Shopping policies. If you sell prohibited products, post inappropriate content, or otherwise violate TikTok rules, your account will be suspended.

When an account is suspended, TikTok will stop running your ads.

If you believe your account was suspended by mistake, you may request an appeal.

To request an appeal:

1. In your TikTok Store Manager, click Appeal in the Your store has been suspended header notification:
   

   

2. The TikTok team will get your request and will contact you via email within 24 hours.
3. The TikTok team will provide you with information on how to remove suspension.

Analyzing ads campaigns

You can measure the effectiveness of your ad campaigns in your TikTok Ads Manager. For general data, visit the Dashboard page that provides you with information about the performance, ad spend, and status of all your campaigns. For more specific and detailed data of your campaigns, ad groups, and ads, go to the Campaign page.

To get the data about your ad campaigns:

1. From your TikTok For Business, select the Ads Manager connected to your store.
2. Open the Dashboard page in the upper menu bar.
   • In the Today's Spends section, you can monitor spendings and check your account balance.
   • In the Active and Not Delivered sections, you can view the status of all campaigns, ad groups, and ads.
   • In the Trends section, view your performance metrics broken down by different dimensions (including gender, OS, dayparting and etc.).
3. Open the Campaign page in the upper menu bar.
   • Select the campaign to analyze. You can use the Filter button to narrow down the number of campaigns to choose from.
   • (optional) Click the Custom Columns button to select the most important data you wish to display.
   • Click View Data to view the performance data and audience analysis.

To learn more about analyzing your ad campaign, please visit TikTok Help Center.