How to Advertise on TikTok in 2022: Easy Steps of Aspiring Results

TikTok is one of the most popular and most-downloaded apps in recent history, which makes it valuable as an advertising platform — especially if you want to reach younger Millennial and Gen Z audiences.

TikTok is a video-sharing social networking service that enables users to make short videos, usually fifteen seconds long, in different genres, such as dance and comedy. With over 689 million monthly active users, TikTok is the sixth-largest social media network worldwide.

Whether you want to sell more of your products or services or drive targeted traffic to your website, TikTok advertising campaigns can give you good returns on your ad spend. TikTok ads can help you reach a young, vibrant audience that loves great content.

While TikTok ads are still a relatively new advertising medium, the TikTok self-serve platform makes it easy for brands to give them a try.

In this guide, you’ll learn how to create a TikTok ad, how big of a budget you’ll need, and which companies should use them. Plus, you’ll get a list of best practices and see some inspiring examples of TikTok advertising in action, so that you can start creating strong campaigns for 2022 and beyond.

TikTok launched its lead generation tool to help businesses generate more leads. Wondering how to run ads on TikTok?We have put together this complete guide to show you how to create ads on TikTok and make the most out of it.

In addition, we have included the info about popular integrations you can try for free to automate data management processes for your TikTok campaigns, such as:

Who should advertise on TikTok in 2022?

Anyone targeting a younger audience can and should advertise on TikTok.

But TikTok isn’t just for teens anymore. Here is TikTok’s core demographic information:

• 25% of users in the US are aged 10-19 and 22.4% are aged 20-29. Only 11% of users are over 50 years old.
• People in most demographics have a favorable opinion of TikTok, even if they aren’t active users
• Women make up over 60% of monthly active users in the US.
• TikTok is used all over the world and is currently one of the world’s most popular social media networking sites.

 

TikTok has been downloaded over 2 billion times as of this year, and it doesn’t seem like the platform’s expansion is going to slow down anytime soon.

As a result, the list of brands spending money on TikTok ads is growing, both in terms of numbers and the breadth of the products they advertise.

If you want to create international campaigns for a predominantly young audience, TikTok is an excellent choice.

 

Who uses TikTok?

TikTok is a popular app available in over 155 countries and in 75 languages. Currently, there are over 1 billion active users worldwide, including both males (53%) and females (47%).

Source: Statista

The proportion of global internet users who use TikTok is shown below. As seen from the table, the number of users keeps increasing every year.

Source: Ape App

As of January 2022, The United States has the most TikTok users, with about 136.5 million users. Indonesia and Brazil respectively stand in the second and third places globally.

Source: Statista

In relation to age, TikTok users are more young people than adults, as shown below.

Source: Hootsuite

Looking at the income of the users also, users with high-income potentials are more on TikTok. This includes people earning between $25k, $75-100k, and $100k.

According to App Annie’s state of mobile 2021 report, TikTok users spent 4.2 hours daily on mobile phones.

All this information about TikTok users makes it an ideal focus point for marketers. But wait! Do TikTok ads perform well for all businesses?

Does TikTok have ads?

Yes, TikTok has various ads for businesses to reach their target audience, including In-feed ads, Brand takeover ads, Top view ads, Branded Hashtag ads, and Branded effect ads.

TikTok ads are not free, but you can create a free TikTok ads account to set up your ads with your budget and schedule. TikTok minimum campaign budget ranges from $500 to a minimum ad group budget of $50.

Are TikTok ads for all businesses?

TikTok is suitable for most businesses but not all. TikTok advertising is ideal for companies looking for large and engaged audiences. Here are some statistics to consider: In 2022, TikTok has an average engagement rate of 17.99%, an overall 90% of users who visit the app more than once a day for an average of 52 minutes per day. Considering all these numbers, TikTok is one of the best platforms for audience engagement.

50% of the TikTok global audience is under 34, with 26% between 18 and 24 years of age. So if you have a business that sells to the younger generation, you are likely to do well with TikTok advertising.

Lastly, TikTok is an intercontinental medium. And you are more likely to run successful campaigns if you have a business with an international audience.

If your audience falls into the categories above, your business will generate great returns on ad spend.Learn more about how to use TikTok for Small Businesses.

Why TikTok advertising?

 

1. TikTok is dominated by the Generation Z audience

We already established that the majority of the TikTok audience is the Generation Z audience (18 – 34 years old). This audience, according to research, represents the most prominent U.S. consumer population at 82 million people. This generation is the fastest-growing consumer segment with a unique purchasing power of over $300 billion. Do you know what that means for your business? Well-targeted ads for this audience could mean more revenue for your business than you could ever imagine.

 

 

Types of TikTok Ads

There are several different types of TikTok Ad formats that advertisers can use. Let’s take a close look at each of them.

Top View Ads 

Top View ads will appear at the very top of a user’s feed. It’s the first video they see when they open the app.

This format offers massive visibility, and it’s great for attention-grabbing brand awareness campaigns.

According to TikTok, this ad format ranks first in engagement and has a 67% higher sales effectiveness than other ad types.

In-Feed Ads

These ads play as users scroll through their For You feeds. They’re full-screen, sound-on ads that blend in with native content. Your audience is already engaged and watching videos, so this is just one more on the list — if you make your ad fun and engaging, you can get as much attention as successful organic content.

This is one of the most common types of TikTok advertising formats.

Branded Hashtag Ads

Branded Hashtag Ads are also a popular choice. They’re designed to spark on-platform engagement, offering up a “TikTok challenge” centered around your branded hashtag.

These ads can be exceptional for generating both brand name recognition and user-generated content on-platform.

Branded Effect Ads

The Branded Effect Ads work a little like filter ads on other platforms. Brands create a branded AR “effect” that users can apply to their own videos.

This is another campaign that can generate engagement, brand awareness, and user-generated content. Awareness is typically the objective of these campaigns (rather than traffic or conversions).

Spark ads

Spark Ads are a relatively new ad format that allows advertisers to leverage organic content and UGC in their advertising. They function similarly to boosted posts on other platforms. You can put an advertising budget behind your own organic content, or use user-generated content (with the creator’s approval).

These ads direct users to your account page and/or an off-platform landing page.

How to set up TikTok ads and campaigns 

In order to create your first TikTok ad campaign, you’ll first need to create a business account here.

Create your TikTok ad account 

Before you launch your first ad, you’ll need an ad account.

1. Go to the TikTok for Business landing page, click Get Started, and enter your region and business type. Then, click Next.
   
2. Fill out your details and click Sign Up
   

You’ll be asked a few more details about your business, including contact information, the business’s legal name, and your business’s description. Then, you’ll have to enter your information, and you’re good to go!

Create your campaign

In TikTok’s advertising system, you follow a hierarchy by first creating a campaign, then an ad group, then, finally, an ad. You can find out more about the TikTok ad structure here.

1. Go to the Campaign tab in the top menu of the Ads Manager dashboard and click Create.

2. Pick your objective. Depending on what your marketing goal is, you’ll choose  an objective from one of three categories: awareness, consideration, or conversions.

Each category includes goal-specific advertising objectives:

• The Awareness category includes Reach. Choose this objective to prioritize showing your ad to as many people as possible.
• The Consideration category includes three objectives: Traffic (sending traffic to your site), App Installs, and on-platform Video Views.
• The Conversion category only includes one objective: Conversions. It allows you to optimize for specific types of conversions like sales or email sign-ups.

That’s all you do to create a campaign. TikTok will automatically keep you moving to the ad group section.

Create your ad group 

1. Choose your promotion type (app install or website) and input your URL. Then, enter your display name, add a profile image, and specify how you want users to engage with your ads.

2. Choose your ad placement. Auto-placement is easiest for your first ad, as TikTok will test different options and see what works for your audience at the best prices.

Manual placement options include placements within TikTok, in the NewsFeed app series (including on sites like BuzzVideo), and the global network Pangle. You can enable or disable any of the options.

3. You then set up different ad options. You can use brand safety features to block your ad from appearing on certain websites. You can also allow users to comment (or not) and determine whether or not you want users to be able to download your video ad on TikTok.
   
4. Decide if you want to use TikTok’s automated creative optimization. This is one of the tools TikTok created for small businesses. It builds ad variations using your images, videos, and copy, and then continually tests them for you. It’s worth testing, though some brands benefit more from manual control and split testing creatives.
   
5. Define your target audience. You can target audiences based on demographics, location, interests, device type, and in-app behavior.

If you want to target women ages 19 to 25 in Denver who love Chipotle, so you can promote your new Mexican restaurant, that’s an option.
You can both include and exclude audiences with different characteristics. If you only want to reach cold audiences, for example, you could target users who fit within your ideal demographics but exclude users who have purchased from you before.You can also create a custom audience from your customer files, website traffic, app activity, or previous ad engagement.

To build a custom audience from website traffic, you’ll need to install the TikTok pixel on your website. The pixel also helps you optimize ads and tie the success of your ads to customer behaviors on your website.

6. Choose between a daily or lifetime budget (find out more about TikTok ad budget settings here).
   
7. Set up your bidding plan (here are some bidding strategies from TikTok). You can choose to cap your bid in the auction, which means you’ll never spend more for a specific action (like a click or video views) than the cap that you set.
   
8. Click Next  — you’re ready to create a new ad!

Create Your TikTok Ads 

1. Upload your ad creatives. This can include either video or image files. TikTok will turn still images into a video for you. Be sure to follow TikTok’s ad creative guidelines.
   
2. Fill in your ad text and call to action.
   
3. Click Submit to send your campaign off for review.

TikTok will check each ad against their guidelines. Here’s a checklist to help make sure your ads are approved on the first review.

How much do TikTok ads cost? 

There is no one simple answer to the question of how much TikTok Ads cost, because the reality is that costs vary depending on the ad type that you choose, your bid, and the market itself.

Like most paid advertising platforms, TikTok advertising runs on a bidding system. This means that the market is competitive, and you’re betting against other advertisers for specific placements and audiences. In simple terms, if someone is willing to pay $1.50 and the next person is willing to pay $1.51, the second person gets the placement.

TikTok helps advertisers optimize bidding, meaning that they can handle bidding settings for you to increase ad deliverability. The only downside to this is that ads may end up costing you more than you would want. To prevent this, you can set a bid cap or optimize for “lowest cost” results. However, the latter may result in lower-quality clicks or placements that are less likely to drive the results you want.

You can also set a daily or lifetime budget. If you never want to spend more than $300 on an ad campaign, defining that as a lifetime budget will prevent you from going over.

That said, we do have some TikTok ad cost benchmarks.

AdAge reported that high-cost ad formats like Branded Hashtag Ads and Branded Effect Ads can be exceptionally pricey, costing brands up to 50k-150k.

The cost of self-serve ad options like Top View or In-Feed Ads is more in line with what you’d expect from traditional social advertising. You must spend a minimum of $20 USD a day per ad group, and we’ve seen costs range from $0.20 to $2 per action.

TikTok ad specs

These are the TikTok ad specs you need to know for standard In-Feed and Top-View TikTok ads:

• The video must be between 5 and 60 seconds long.
• The max file size is 500MB (except for Spark Ads, where no max file size applies).
• The horizontal aspect ratio is 16:9 (the recommended file size is 960 x 540 pixels).
• The square aspect ratio is 1:1 (the recommended file size is 640 x 640 pixels).
• The vertical aspect ratio is 9:16 (the recommended file size is 540 x 960 pixels).
• It’s recommended to stick to .mp4, .mov, .mpeg, .avi, or .gif file types .

​Make sure that you’re leaving margins in the top (at least 130 pixels), the bottom (up to 484 pixels), and the left (44 pixels) of your creatives to account for profile pictures, CTA buttons, and more that will appear over the ad.

TikTok advertising best practices and examples 

Creating an in-feed ad is easy on TikTok. Creating an ad that efficiently attracts new fans and customers is a little more challenging. Here are a few things to keep in mind as you launch your first TikTok ad campaign.

Be authentic

On a platform that says sharing creativity is its mission, your ads will need to have some flare. But you can’t be creative at the expense of your brand identity.

In their Business Help Center, TikTok says it wants you to be authentic. “Creative should be consistent with your brand image and resonate with your target audience. Serious brands should have serious ads, trendy brands should have trendy ads, you get the picture.”

If your brand has a fun side at the core, embrace that. Chipotle ran influencer ads as part of thei their #guacdance campaign that took off because it was fun, lighthearted, and true to their brand.

 

 

Redbull is another great example. The energy drink manufacturer is known for bringing high-octane sports to the world. Their TikToks stay true to that mission.

Work with influencers (wisely)

Influencers are creators who will partner with you to share your message with their audience. Pick the right ones, and you’ll see big returns on your TikTok ad spend.

When you’re searching for the right influencer, look for the following:

• Relevance. An influencer known for makeup tutorials might not be the best option to promote your energy drink.
• Influence. Both their follower count and their engagement metrics (likes, shares) matter.
• Location. Whether your brand is local or national, you want an influencer’s core audience to have access to your products.

You can find influencers in the Users tab of the Discovery page. Just enter a topic in the search bar. You’ll see their follower count right away. Click on their profile to look up other engagement numbers such as how many people have liked their videos.

TikTok also offers a one-stop shop for brand/influencer collaborations called Creator Marketplace. There, you can search for the perfect influencer match filtering by metrics that matter to you.

Use Smart Video Soundtrack

Smart Video Soundtrack is a free creative tool offered by TikTok. It automatically pairs appropriate music with your video.

Not only does music make your ad more fun for the viewer — it can also make it more discoverable. That’s because users can browse all videos that use a specific sound. On TikTok, audio tracks can be compared to hashtags.

Smart Video Soundtrack takes the guesswork and the copyright worry out of adding music to your ads. Just upload your video to your ad, and Smart Video Soundtrack will find a track from its 900+ song library to match it.

You can even test multiple tracks to see which performs best in your ads.

Use upbeat music to stand out

Fast-paced visuals and music can be an easy way to stand out in users’ feeds as they’re scrolling. It’s a simple trick that can make your ads more fun and exciting, so test it with some of your self-serve ad campaigns and see how it works for you.

Need an example of what this looks like? Check out this TikTok ad from Apple:

 

 

Let users express their creativity 

If you’re running a campaign that you want to go viral, or your goal is to build up engagement, make sure you offer an experience that your audience will actually get excited about.

Inspire your audience. How can they make the challenge or effect their own?

Beauty brand Essie created a branded hashtag contest, for which followers were asked to show their nail-art creativity.

Essie’s branded hashtag has now acquired over 9 billion views.

Carefully consider delivery options 

When you’re setting up your ad group, there are different options you can select for deliverability.

One is dayparting, which allows you to only run your ads during certain hours of the day or specific days of the week.

While you can test anything that you think could benefit your campaigns, this option is typically going to be most effective if customers can only convert on an ad during certain hours. For example, an after-hours taxi service in a college town could run ads exclusively Thursday through Sunday while people are preparing to go out, or a restaurant offering delivery when they’re actually open.

Another option you can select is accelerated ad delivery (“standard” ad delivery is the default option). This can sound appealing, but you should treat it with caution; accelerated delivery pushes out as much of your ad spend out as quickly as possible, sometimes lowering the quality of placements in order to drive results quickly.

As a result, accelerated delivery may only be worth it when you’re on a tight deadline, e.g. if you have an event coming up and want to reach as many people as possible immediately.

See what works and optimize accordingly 

It’s important to keep an eye on your campaigns to see which ones perform well, so you can recreate your success in the future.

When you sign in to TikTok’s Ad Manager, you’ll see a dashboard that summarizes the status and performance of your ads.

Here, you’ll find:

• The current status of ads and campaigns
• Your overall CPM, CPC, CPA, CTR, Conversions, and more metrics
• Your current ad spend

You can even export the results with a single click for further review.

In the Campaign tab, you can see more detailed results, all the way down to the single ad level.

 

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).

Source: TikTok

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 (more on that below).

Source: TikTok

Campaign budget optimization is also available for the App Installs and Conversions objectives using the Lowest Cost bidding strategy.

For optimized Cost Per Click objectives, TikTok is beta testing a feature to provide a suggested bid.

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.

Source: TikTok

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
• Behaviors
• Device details

Source: TikTok

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.

Source: TikTok

Finally, choose your delivery type: standard or accelerated. Standard divides your budget evenly over the scheduled dates of the campaign, whereas accelerated delivery spends your budget as fast as possible.

Source: Standard vs. Accelerated Delivery budget allocation on TikTok

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.

Source: TikTok

Your ad will go through a review process before going live.

Note: To use Spark Ads, you’ll need to contact the creators of the content you want to use so they can provide an access code. Get the full Spark Ad instructions from TikTok.

If you’d prefer to work with a TikTok creator on a custom campaign, check out the TikTok Creator Marketplace.

Or, boost existing content with TikTok Promote

TikTok Promote allows anyone aged 18 or over to promote existing content. It’s the TikTok equivalent of Facebook Boost.

Here’s how to boost a TikTok:

1. From your TikTok profile, tap the three line icon for settings, then tap Creator tools.
2. Tap Promote.
3. Tap the video you want to promote.
4. Choose your advertising goal: More video views, more website visits, or more followers.
5. Choose your audience, budget, and duration, and tap Next.
6. Enter your payment info and tap Start Promotion.

TikTok ad specs

In this section, we’ll focus on ads that run on TikTok itself, rather than the family of TikTok news apps.

TikTok video ad specs

• Aspect ratio: 9:16, 1:1, or 16:9. Vertical videos with a 9:16 ratio perform best.
• Minimum resolution: 540 x 960 px or 640 x 640 px. Videos with a resolution of 720 px perform best.
• File types: mp4, .mov, .mpeg, .3gp, or .avi
• Duration: 5-60 seconds. TikTok recommends 21-34 seconds for top performance.
• Max file size: 500 MB
• Profile image: square image less than 50 KB
• App name or brand name: 4-40 characters (app) or 2-20 characters (brand)
• Ad description: 1-100 characters, no emojis

Spark ad specs

• Aspect ratio: Any
• Minimum resolution: Any
• Duration: Any
• Max file size: Any
• Account mentions and emojis allowed
• Display name and text come from the original organic post

Note: Character counts are based on Latin characters. For Asian characters, generally the allowed character count is half.

How much do TikTok ads cost?

Minimum budgets

TikTok ads are based on a bidding model. You can control costs through daily and lifetime budgets for campaigns and ad groups. The minimum budgets are:

Campaign level

• Daily budget: $50USD
• Lifetime budget: $50USD

Ad group level

• Daily budget: $20USD
• Lifetime budget: Calculated as daily budget multiplied by the number of days scheduled

TikTok is tight-lipped about specific ad costs, but they do reveal the following tips and insights:

• If using a Bid Cap or Cost Cap bidding strategy, set your initial campaign level budget at No Limit and the daily ad group budget to at least 20x your target cost per action (CPA).
• For App Event Optimization, set an initial budget of at least $100 or 20x your target (CPA), whichever is higher.
• For Conversions campaigns using the Lowest Cost bid strategy, set an initial budget of at least $100 or 20x your target (CPA), whichever is higher.

TikTok ads cost examples

TikTok also reveals the costs for some specific campaigns, which may help you benchmark your own spending:

Skincare brand Synth Labs Intl. ran a Spark Ads campaign to drive 300,000 impressions at $0.32 CPC.

Source: TikTok

Online jewelry store Lion Wild used video ads to drive a 19.35% conversion rate at $0.13 CPC and $0.17 CPM.

Source: TikTok

Online gaming marketplace G2A used video ads to achieve 12 million impressions at $0.16 CPM and $0.06 CPC.

Source: TikTok

Mobile games publisher Playa Games used video ads to achieve a 130% return on ad spend with a €0.06 CPC.

Source: TikTok

BVOD streaming service TVNZ OnDemand had an 0.5% click-through rate at NZ$0.42 CPC.

Source: TikTok

Beauty brand Mallows Beauty saw a 2.86% click-through rate at £0.04 CPC.

Source: TikTok

Maker marketplace Strike Gently Co. used TikTok Promote to drive a 1.9% click-through rate at $0.27 CPC.

Source: TikTok

Hyundai Australia used video ads to drive an 0.88% click-through rate at less than $0.30 CPC.

Source: TikTok

TikTok ad costs are subject to sales tax if applicable in your region. In the U.S., only advertisers based in Hawaii pay sales tax (4.71%). UK advertisers pay VAT of 20%. This amount is applied to your total ad spend, so be prepared for your bill to include tax.

TikTok advertising best practices

Mix and match your creative styles

Rather than using one type of creative, or very similar creatives, switch up your style. TikTok suggests updating your creative every seven days to avoid audience fatigue.

Switch it up within each video, too. TikTok recommends varied scenes with B-roll or transition footage.

Get to the point

Video ads can be up to 60 seconds long, but TikTok recommends keeping them to 21-34 seconds.

Make the first 3 to 10 seconds especially eye-catching and engaging to avoid losing viewers. The best-performing TikTok ads highlight the key message or product within the first 3 seconds.

Use sound plus captions

93% of top-performing TikTok videos use audio, and 73% of TikTok users said they would stop and look at ads with audio. In particular, fast tracks above 120 beats per minute usually have the highest view-through rate.

But captions and text are important too. In particular, use text to highlight your call to action. TikTok found 40% of auction ads with the highest view-through rate include text overlays.

Stay positive and authentic

TikTok recommends that videos stay “positive, authentic and inspiring.” This is not the place to test out your dark and moody content or use a heavy-handed sales pitch. You also don’t want a video that looks too “produced.”

Try using user-generated content in your ads to keep them truly authentic. For example, one in three of the top auction ads involves someone looking directly at the camera and speaking to the audience.

The Australian brand Royal Essence used this strategy to get 2.2 million impressions and 50,000 clicks.

 

TikTok ads examples

1. Penningtons

Canadian clothing band Penningtons partnered with the creator Alicia Mccarvell to create in-feed video ads that saw 53% more comments, 18% more likes and 55% more views than the company’s content on other platforms.

The key to success: Partnering with an established creator (a.k.a. influencer) who understood how to produce authentic TikTok content that showed off the brand without feeling too salesy.

@penningtonsWear the bathing suit! Don’t miss another beach day with these cute styles! 🩱👙 @aliciamccarvell #penningtons #plussizefashion #PennGals♬ original sound – Penningtons

 

2. Little Caesars

Little Caesars used Spark Ads to amplify content from 13 creators they partnered with for their #GoCrazy campaign.

The key to success: They gave the creators complete creative control, and learned a few things in the process. They found TikToks featuring families produced the highest click-through rates for their campaign.

@gabbydouglasI LOVE to #GoCrazy for @littlecaesarspizza Stuffed Crazy Bread! 🤸#LittleCaesars #Ad♬ Go Crazy – Little Caesars

 

3. wet n wild

Wet n wild used a branded hashtag challenge to help launch their new Big Poppa mascara. Their #BiggerIsBetter challenge saw 1.5 million user videos made and 2.6 billion total views.

The key to success: wet n wild used a combo strategy of a branded hashtag challenge + a custom sound + creator partnerships + Top View ads. Each component magnified the others, resulting in massive reach.

@rominagafurBig Poppa mascara got me feelin like the biggest n the baddest wetnwildambassador@wetnwildbeauty #BiggerIsBetter #Mascara #ad♬ Big Poppa Heart Stoppa – wetnwildbeauty

 

Grow your TikTok presence alongside your other social channels using Hootsuite. From a single dashboard, you can schedule and publish posts for the best times, engage your audience, and measure performance.

 

TikTok ads: final thoughts 

Some unlikely brands are connecting with TikTok’s young, creative audience in unexpected ways. And they’re doing so by blending their paid  TikTok ads with a steady stream of organic content.

The lesson for other brands is to join in the fun that made TikTok so popular. Fill your channel with the type of content TikTok users come to the app to see. That way, when your paid ad generates a ton of interest in your brand, that new audience will have a reason to stick around for a long time.

What do you think? Have you used TikTok Ads? What are you most excited about when it comes to TikTok advertising, and what kind of results have you seen? Share your thoughts in the comments below!