TikTok Ads: How to advertise on TikTok in 2023?

TikTok is a social network that has experienced spectacular growth in recent years, especially during the Covid health crisis.

Launched in 2016 by Chinese company ByteDance, the app allows users to create and share short vertical videos accompanied by music or sound.

In a short time, TikTok has become the favorite destination for many users to have fun, discover new trends and create original content.

The platform now has more than 1 billion users worldwide and is particularly popular with young people and the GenZ .

What is TikTok Ads advertising?

TikTok Ads is the advertising platform of TikTok also called Business TikTok.

It allows advertisers to configure and broadcast their advertisements to their targets.

Brands and advertisers define their objectives, audiences and budgets within the tool. They can then manage and optimize their campaigns using the advertising statistics provided by the platform.

Why advertise on TikTok Ads?

Today TikTok is an indispensable platform for many users.

Indeed, TikTok has managed to gather hundreds of millions of people in just a few years.

An opportunity for brands wishing to reach new consumers.

The platform is still young and the advertising on TikTok is not yet widespread as could be the one on Facebook Ads.

Many brands are still reluctant to position themselves on the platform.

However, this gives a certain competitive advantage to advertisers who are starting now in the TikTok advertising .

Additionally, TikTok is a video platform that focuses on creating short, entertaining content, making it a great place for creative and engaging video ad campaigns.

The video format is considered to be one of the most effective formats for social media advertising campaigns, including TikTok.

Videos have the ability to capture users’ attention more effectively than static formats such as images or text because they can use visuals and sound to tell a story or convey a message in a more immersive way.

The TikTok advertising audience in France

In France, there are nearly 21 million active users each month.

18-34 year olds represent 71% of the overall audience.

Finally, the platform is made up of 57% women and 43% men.

On the usage side, users spend on average more than 90 minutes per day and open the application more than 18 times in the same day.

This therefore shows the strong interest that users have for TikTok and the enormous potential that brands could derive from it thanks to the TikTok advertising .

The audience specific to TikTok is also to be taken into account.

The platform now has over 1 billion active users worldwide and some users are exclusively on TikTok and not present on other platforms.

On the graph above, we see the non-duplicated audience of TikTok.

For example: 23% of TikTok users are not present on Instagram while 42% of TikTok users do not use Facebook.

These non-duplicated audiences on TikTok offer brands and advertisers the opportunity to target new people who are not present on other social networks.

Structure of a TikTok Ads advertising campaign?

The structure of a campaign advertising on TikTok Ads is similar to that of other platforms such as Facebook Ads or Snapchat Ads.

It consists of 3 levels:

Countryside
Ad groups
Advertisements

The campaign level is where you define your objective.

What do you want to achieve with this campaign? From traffic, sales, app download or lead generation.

Next come the ad groups that make up the campaign. You can set up different ad groups within a TikTok Ads advertising campaign .

It is at the ad group level that you choose your targeting (centre of interest, remarketing, customer listing), your budget and the placement of your advertisements on TikTok .

Finally, the last level is made up of advertisements. These are all the video or photo creations that will be visible in advertising on the platform.

You will also configure here, the titles and the calls to action as well as the landing pages of each advertisement.

How to advertise on TikTok Ads?

1) Creating a TikTok Ads account on the TikTok For Business

To be able to launch campaigns of advertisements on TikTok you need to create a Business TikTok account.

As explained above, the TikTok Business is the advertising platform that allows you to configure and manage your campaigns.

Info : you do not have to have a TikTok account to broadcast TikTok Ads ads .

Visit the Business For TikTok website

This is where you will create your account TikTok advertising

When you register, you will be asked for your email address and the creation of a password.

Fill in your information

When creating your account, you will be asked for various information relating to your company:

Company Name
Country
Activity area
Currency
Time zone
Phone number

The next step will be dedicated to tax information.

This is where you choose whether you want an automatic payment or a manual payment with the setting up of a balance.

Choice of TikTok Ads Manager mode

We advise you to choose the custom mode to take advantage of all the features of the tool.

TikTok Ads Ads Manager

That’s it, your advertising account is created, you are now in the account manager. TikTok Ads ads .

We now invite you to add a payment method in the payment tab.

2) Installing your Pixel TikTok

The TikTok Pixel is a piece of code to be installed at the header level of your website.

It is a tool that allows you to trace the different events that happen on your site, namely a product page view, an addition to the basket, a purchase, etc…

The TikTok Pixel allows brands and advertisers to optimize their advertising campaigns, but also to create personalized audiences.

It is an essential tool if you want to launch your advertising campaigns on TikTok.

It must therefore be installed and configured before launching your campaigns.

We explain how to create and install your Pixel TikTok in a dedicated article.

Convert API also becomes very important to collect all of your events and conversions.

3) Creating a TikTok Ads campaign

To create your first campaign TikTok Ads advertising , select the “campaign” tab then click on “create”.

4) Setting up your TikTok advertising campaign objective

As explained above, it is at the campaign level that you define your advertising objective.

There are 7 different advertising objectives on TikTok divided into 3 different categories, Awareness, Consideration, Conversion.

The Reach objective: It allows you to distribute your ads to as many people as possible
The Traffic objective: This objective is actually a traffic objective which aims to redirect prospects to a site or an application.
The video views objective: It allows you to obtain more views and engagements on your video advertisements
The lead generation objective: It allows you to collect data on prospects by filling out a form.
The objective interaction with the community: It allows to obtain more visits on your profile and subscribers
The application promotion objective: It allows you to redirect viewers and encourage them to download an application
The conversion objective: This is the ideal objective to generate sales on your store

Give your campaign a name and select a daily or global budget for your campaign.

5) Set up your TikTok ad groups

Name your ad groups and choose where you want to redirect your leads (External site, Instant page without leaving TikTok).

Also define the event you want to get for this announcement group.

6) Choose your TikTok ad placements

You have the choice between placing your ads automatically or selecting a placement manually.

You can also choose whether or not to keep comments on your ads, shares and video downloads by users.

7) Targeting your TikTok Ads advertising audience

Now let’s move on to targeting TikTok Ads advertising .

You can choose different targeting:

Demographics (Country, City, Languages, Gender, Age, Interests & Behaviour, and Device Types)
You can import your customer data for remarketing
Create custom audiences that look like your customers (look like)

8) Budget and delivery of your TikTok Ads ads

You can allocate a daily budget to your groups of advertisements, choose the intervals of dates of diffusion as well as the schedules.

9) Bidding and Optimizing Your TikTok Ads

You can choose different optimization goals, per click or per conversion.

TikTok Ads offers different pricing options for advertisers including: cost per thousand impressions (CPM), cost per thousand views (CPV) and cost per click (CPC).

These different bidding methods allow advertisers to pay for their ad campaigns based on the performance they want to achieve.

10) Configure your TikTok Ads ads

The final step will be to set up your ad.

You will be able to choose:

The format of the TikTok ad (video, photo)
Import your creations
Fill in your landing page
Set up the texts of your ads and your buttons

You have a preview of your ads on the right.

Once your ads have been configured, you can validate, TikTok will then analyze your ad to verify that it complies with the rules before putting it online.

How to measure the performance of your TikTok Ads campaign?

To measure performance, there are two types of indicators.

1) Dissemination and behavior indicators

These are classic indicators measured by the TikTok application: impressions, cost per thousand, number of clicks, video views over 6 seconds…

Although they are not performance-oriented, these indicators give an initial trend of the effectiveness of advertisements on the platform.

2) Performance indicators linked to events

This second group of indicators measures the actions carried out most of the time outside the TikTok application, on your merchant site for example. They are usually measured by the TikTok pixel which must first be installed and configured correctly.

Here are the main indicators to monitor for your performance-oriented TikTok Ads campaigns:

Content view: consultation of a product sheet on an e-commerce site for example. It is to be differentiated from the Page view which is the default event reported by the pixel once the Internet user consults any page of the site.
Added to cart: reports the fact that a user adds a product to his cart. If the pixel is correctly configured, it also reports the value of the products added to the basket.
Payment finalization: this event indicates that a payment has been finalized on the merchant site or the application. Subsequently, it is also possible to measure the cost per purchase to determine the effectiveness of a campaign, an ad group or a particular ad.
ROAS (Return on ad spend): this is simply what each campaign, ad group or ad has earned for you per euro invested. It is calculated thanks to the value of the baskets validated on the merchant site which goes up via the TikTok pixel.
Prospect: finalization of a registration form with the addition of contact details, such as email address or telephone number.

In order to measure the effectiveness of your campaigns, it is necessary to observe the evolution of the indicators from these two categories. Nevertheless, it is the performance data on site or application that will allow you to measure the real profitability of your campaigns.

Indeed, it is possible to have a campaign that generates a low number of clicks but a high number of purchases: this is explained by the importance of the post view on TikTok. It is common on TikTok to come across an advertisement and go to the merchant site from the browser of your phone, tablet or PC without clicking on the call to action button.

This is measured by the platform: the default attribution setting for pixel-dependent KPIs is 1 day after view and 7 days after click.

Advertising formats on TikTok Ads

There are different advertising formats on TikTok Ads .

Each has its specificity and its usefulness according to your objectives.

1) Format: TikTok Top view

The format TikTok Top View is a video advertisement that appears as soon as the application is opened.

This is the first video users will see when launching the app.

This advertisement is displayed in full screen for all users.

The ad is unskippable for 3 seconds and can last up to 60 seconds.

TikTok recommends a video between 9 to 15s for the Top View format.

This format allows advertisers to deliver advertisements that attract the attention of a very large number of users.

However, to be able to launch Top View Formats, you must of course have a substantial budget.

Here are the characteristics of Top View ads in Spark and Non-Spark.

Dimension : Vertical 9:16, 540*960px
Supported Formats : .mp4, .mov, .mpeg, .3gp
Duration of video: 5 to 60s, recommended 9 to 15s.

To learn more about this format, you can read our full article here .

2) Format: In Feed Ads

The format In Feed Ads is a video ad that appears in the News Feed of targeted “For You” users, similar to a normal organic post.

This allows advertisers to deliver advertisements that integrate naturally with user content and are therefore more likely to convert and drive engagement.

This format is particularly effective when using videos from UGC content creators .

It is a format that is much more accessible for brands.

Here are the characteristics of a non-Spark In Feed Ads (not published on the brand account)

Dimension :
- Vertical (recommended): 9:16, 540x960px
- Horizontal: 16:9, 960x540px
- Square: 1:1, 640x640px
Format supported: .mp4, .mov, .mpeg, .3gp .avi
Video length: 5 to 60s, recommended 21 to 34s.

3) Format: Top Feed Ads

The Top Feed Ads format is identical to the In Feed Ads format with one exception.

This format comes just after the Top view format and organic TikTok.

It is therefore the very first In feed Ads format that users will see.

4) Format: Branded Hashtag Challenge

The Branded Hashtag Challenge is an advertising format that involves challenging the TikTok community using a specific branded hashtag.

Videos appear as In Feed Ads videos in users’ For You tab.

Users who accept the challenge can then create videos using that hashtag and share them on TikTok, allowing advertisers to produce user-generated content ( UGC ) for their brand.

It is also a good way for brands to get closer to their audience and thus further develop their image and reputation.

5) Format: Branded Mission

Branded Mission is a new advertising format that allows brands to offer missions to content creators on the platform.

Creators can participate in missions by publishing their videos while respecting the brief imposed by the brand.

The goal is to generate a maximum of UGC videos which will then be sponsored in UGA.

For their part, the best creators are rewarded with remuneration from the brand.

To learn more about this format, we have written a complete article on the subject Branded Mission here .

6) Format: Branded Effects

Branded Effect is an ad format that allows advertisers to create branded filters, stickers, and effects for users to use in their own videos.

This allows advertisers to create an interactive and engaging experience for users, while spreading their brand in creative and fun ways.

7) Format: Spark Ads

The Spark Ads format also called Whitelisting TikTok is one of TikTok ad formats the most efficient.

It allows brands to sponsor a video directly from a content creator’s account.

The advantage is to be able to benefit from the authenticity of the video, the notoriety of the creator and his community to promote his products or services.

Additionally, the Spark Ads format will easily blend in with organic content and won’t even appear as an advertisement to viewers.