Thinking about advertising on TikTok? Here is an enormous opportunity for brands to market their products and services to the young generation. TikTok self-serving ad platform network is opening a door for reaching influencers and audiences to increase brand awareness and drive traffic. As TikTok emerges to become a big social media network like Facebook and Instagram, their self-serving ad model is growing and making an impact for brands that are starting to use TikTok as a source to increase their conversions and promote their brand.

How to start advertising on Tiktok?

1. Set up your TikTok ads account

If you want to start advertising on TikTok Self-Serving Ad Platform Network, you need to create a TikTok ads account. Visit the TikTok Ads campaign page and click on ‘Create an Ad’ blue button. As TikTok ads are still in Beta, the process of setting up your account is not fully online yet. For that reason, once you have submitted your personal information and your brand’s website, you will be contacted by a representative that will help you create your TikTok ads account. It may take 48 hours to be ready.

2. Create a TikTok Ad Campaign

Once your TikTok Ad account is live, you can create an ad campaign. Just go to the TikTok ads page and click on Campaign Tab in the top menu and click “create”. Then, depending on your advertising objectives you can choose to create an ad to drive:

• Traffic - this goal allows you to drive people to any URL you choose (website, landing page, etc.), or to get more people to use your app.
• App installs - this goal allows you to drive people to an app store so they can download your app.
• Conversions - this goal allows you to drive actions on your website (for example, signing up on your email list or buying a product).

3. Define Where You Want To Place Your Ad

While creating your ad on TikTok Self-Serving Ad Platform Network , you can choose from a variety of options to run your ads on. Tiktok allows you to select between ‘Automatic Placement’ or ‘Select Placement’. If you click ‘Automatic Placement’, TikTok will automatically deliver your ads across all placements available. If you go with ‘Select Placement’, you can manually choose from the 5 different placements TikTok offers.

Once you have selected your preferred placements and entered all the details required to start running your ad, it’s time to define your target audience. Select the desired options and demographics, then you're ready to set your budget.

4. Set Your TikTok Ad Spend, Duration and Goals

After setting your ad, you’ll be asked to define your TikTok ad budget. You can choose either a daily budget or a total budget (minimum $50). Also, you can schedule your ads and choose how long you want them to work.

Next, define the speed which you want your TikTok ad budget to spend. The Standard delivery option optimizes your budget across the duration of the ad campaign, while the Accelerate option uses the budget as quickly as possible during the ad duration.

Once you have set up your budget you can choose to optimize your ad for Conversion, Click or Impression.

Conversion

Your ad will be shown to an audience that is more likely to convert for your product or service. you can choose to set conversions for app installs or specific actions on your website via TikTok pixel. Conversion goals are charged on the basis of oCPC (optimization cost per click) which ensures your ad will be shown to people likely to convert on your ad.

Click

Your ad is enhanced to attract as many clicks as possible. Clicks are charged on CPC (Cost per click).

Impression

Your ad will be allocated on a CPM (cost per mille), which refers to the price of a thousand impressions.

Tip: you can turn on or off the ‘Smart Optimization’ option, which allows that your bidding will be constantly optimized to increase conversions. If you choose Click or Impression as your goal, it’s best to switch off Smart Optimization.

5. Design Your Ad

You can choose between a variety of creating options on TikTok such as Brand Take Overs, In-Feed Ads and Hashtag challenges to optimize your ad for your audience. Visit TikTok help guide to learn more about TikTok’s video creation Toolkit.

What are the placements available on Tiktok ads?

TikTok has a family of apps that you can choose to run your ads on. These include Top Buzz, Buzz Video, Newsrepublic, Babe, Pangle (Japan) and Vigo and Helo (only available in India). You can also select an option for automatic placements where TikTok places your ads on platforms that would perform best.

What are the targeting options available on Tiktok ads?

According to your marketing goals, you can use the TikTok ads targeting feature to cover more specifically the audience you want and improve your ad performance.

Ad Targeting

You can create ad groups with specific user targeting:

• Custom audiences: You can create a custom audience based on their engagement, app activity, website traffic, email opt-in, customers that have downloaded your app, etc. This can help you narrow your niche and be more specific in your advertising.
• Demographics: You can target your audience by their gender, age (above 18 years old), location, language and interest categories (for example beauty, fashion, food, etc)
• Device: Be more specific by creating audiences based on devices, mobile carriers, device price or Operation systems (like IOS or Android) your desired audience use.
• TikTok ads Pixel: Track your website conversions and actions with TikTok ads pixel. (to use this function you need to install the pixel on your website.)

Interest-Based Targeting

Interest-based ads can improve significantly your ad targeting by enabling you to create an audience that is more related to what your brand is offering.

While creating an ad group, you can simply select “interest categories” and add the interest tags that your brand is looking for. Your ad will be shown only to users that are interested in those topics.

How does it work?

Interest tags represent a user interest on any given type of content. TikTok calculates the level of interest of a user measuring their interaction ( clicks, views, likes, comments) and the type of content they engage with, for example, a Woman 25 years old, interested in “beauty” and “fashion”, So it’s easier for brands to optimize their ad delivery and engage with audiences that will love their products. 

How can I measure interest tags on my TikTok ads?

TikTok allows you to view the performance of your interest-based ads and evaluate the effectiveness of your tags, so you can optimize the ads and boost your performance.

The opportunities to build your brand with TikTok are endless. Brands and marketers have so much potential to engage with new audiences and skyrocket their business.