How to Launch Ads on TikTok
Don’t sleep on TikTok. It’s not a newcomer anymore, and we predict 2023 will be huge for the platform. Get in early (now!) while the CPAs are cheap and consumers are looking to shift their behaviors with the new year.
Today, we’re going to assume that you already took a page from our creative playbooks and have some TikTok ad creative ready to launch. (If you don’t, no worries… steal from these top ads from 2022 or use this ad creative template.
Now that you’ve got your creative pipeline full, let’s talk about the best way to set up your ad campaigns.
Choose CBO or ABO
TikTok for Business has a lot of the same features as Meta’s Facebook Ads. Just like in Facebook Ads, you can choose to set up your campaigns with either Campaign Budget Optimization (CBO) or Ad Set Budget Optimization (ABO). On Facebook, we mostly recommend ABO because of the increased ability for marketers to control spend allocation to their top performers. On TikTok, it’s a little different.
CBO Is Better for Exiting Learning
On TikTok, we recommend using CBO if you are spending less than $1,000/day on your campaign. This is primarily because of TikTok’s intense learning phase (https://ads.tiktok.com/help/article?aid=11234) — the period right after launching ads before the algorithm has enough data for performance to stabilize. TikTok’s requirement to exit the learning phase is 50 conversions. If you are optimizing for a more expensive, bottom-of-funnel event (e.g. purchases), this can be hard to achieve without exorbitant budgets.
CBO allows TikTok ads to exit the learning phase faster than ABO because it means that you need 50 conversions at the campaign level vs. ABO, which requires 50 in each ad set.
Once you decide on a budget strategy, you cannot convert to the other mid-flight (like you can on Facebook). Instead, you would need to launch a whole new campaign.
ABO Is Better for Control and Rapid Testing
If you spend more than $1,000/day, ABO might be your best option as it will give you more control, similar to Facebook. We have seen the TikTok algorithm tend to latch on to a top performer and allocate all of the spend to it using CBO. Which is exactly as it is designed to do. But, that top-performer could end up becoming a vampire.
If you are testing at scale, this could potentially hurt you. You may not be able to get enough spend to new creatives or audiences for them to perform. You could end up writing off a test as a failure, but in reality, it never had a fair chance. ABO gives you more control on how that budget is spent.
Good News! It’s OK to Reset Learnings… Occasionally
Unlike on Facebook, where marketers should try to avoid resetting learnings as much as possible, on TikTok it’s actually okay (and many times beneficial) to relaunch a campaign or kick ads back into learning.
If performance starts tanking, or your ads don’t take off, it’s best to launch a new ad or ad set to reset the learning. This can give the TikTok algorithm a little nudge to take a second look at your ads.
If your account is already performing well (and shows no short-term decline in performance), exercise caution with this technique. After all, you don’t want to mess with a good thing. And if TikTok’s algo already helps your CPAs stay low, no need to push your ads back into the learning phase.
Define Your Audience
TikTok separates out audience data into 4 tiers, with Tier 1 being the most broad and Tier 4 being the most specific.
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Just like how upper-funnel metrics can garner insight into lower funnel events, Tier 1 audiences can help you whittle down and hone your TikTok audiences. As you launch more ads, you can try out narrower audiences, collecting audience wins and data along the way.
If you are working with a budget of more than $1,000/day, we recommend starting with a broad audience. This can help set your account up for success because once your ads exit the learning phase, you will have extensive insight into your audience and can identify narrower audiences for future tests. If you are spending less than $1,000/day, you can build an audience using the two-step process we laid out here.
Scale Your Winning Ads
Once you have ads that are working for you, how can you scale those across your account?
1) Try Different Audiences With Your Wins
Be creative about who they are and what they see on TikTok. Check out our TikTok Audience Cheat Sheet if you need some inspiration.
2) Increase Budgets When You Find a Win
Then, decrease your budget and launch new ads when CTR starts to drop.
3) Try Your TikTok Ads On Different Channels
We found that TikTok ads also work on Meta, Pinterest, and Snapchat. Test out your creative to see if it can help boost ROI on any other platform.
What to Avoid: TikTok Red Flags ??
Now that you know how to get started with ad ops on TikTok, let’s review what to stay away from on the platform.
1) Avoid Increasing Ad Frequency
When using the app organically, a user NEVER sees the same video twice. To stay to be native to the platform, try to avoid ad frequency. Instead, offer multiple videos from the same brand/product but not the exact same content.
2) Watch Out For These Signs of Creative Fatigue