A Beginner’s Guide to Getting Started with TikTok Ads

TikTok Ads

Do you want to advertise your brand and reach a young, content-hungry target audience through TikTok ads? Read this article and get to know tips and different ads before deciding the one to use in the campaign.

TikTok is a social media platform recommended for kids and entertainment and trending dance moves and is also used as a business brand marketing platform. Therefore, if you wish to increase your brand awareness on social media platforms, consider investing in TikTok. If you give TikTok ads the priority, you can quickly increase the sales of your business brand through social media.

Most of the marketers, about 84%, have turned their brand awareness investment on TikTok. imagine these statistics because TikTok records over one billion active users per month. The business is growing and expanding its product awareness. The platform's rapid growth is a promising opportunity for increased brand awareness and sales.

TikTok has become unstoppable by advertisers, and it is still evolving platform for advertising, brand engagement, and the discovery of new products.

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Are TikTok Ads Worth It?

Advertising on TikTok is worth it to target the young generation and specifically women. Influencers have high chances of attaining their goals with this metric in mind. Because roughly 43% of the TikTok users are young adults aged 18 to 24 years. Furthermore, about 24.7% of the active TikTok users are women making up the largest category as the advertising audience.

Again, the most significant percentage of these women, estimated to be 120,768,500, are located in the united states. Interestingly, the rate of the adult generation targeted by the TikTok ads reaches audiences outside North American states, specifically targeting Asia and the middle east.

And if you are targeting to market to an international audience, then using TikTok ads, you have a high chance of scoring the most increased reach.

Thus, it is worth investing in TikTok ads. Though businesses offer different products, they can; target audiences aged 35 and below, businesses targeting young adult women ranging between 18-25 years and companies with a target of establishing a solid presence in the middle east and Asia.

Therefore, TikTok ads on a platform are vital in increasing accessibility and curating relevant campaigns. Though, small firms are not even aware that TikTok ads are worth investing in due to the time the ad takes to give back on their investments. But, setting up a TikTok campaign is very simple, creating genuine TikTok video content, and the marketers have accessibility to the insights and other related information.

If you want to access the relevant data, then click here.

Types of TikTok Ads

When it comes to TikTok ads, there are several types available where you can select the one relevant to your brand campaign. However, you must understand that any content creator can boost their performance using either kind of TikTok ad.

Recently, the platform released a report stating that the power of a good content creator on TikTok arises from the ads. The post featuring the ad has proved successful, with a leading margin of 83%, indicating a high engagement rate and improved brand recall instead of those who do not use ads.

If you wish to explore different types of TikTok ads, here we go now:

In-feed Ads

These are ads that any audience comes across while scrolling through the FTP section on TikTok. And these ads can even go up to 60-second duration. However, a sweet spot consists of ads ranging from 9 to 15 seconds for optimal results. Thus, the audience and TikTokers tend to engage with the In-Feed ads through comments, shares, and even likes. Interestingly, the ads are skippable whenever you wish to.

The businesses, marketers, and influencers that rely on these ads involve a call to action icon that redirects you to the business landing page when you click on it. So, the In-feed ads are perfect for targeting to drive traffic to your website and increase sales from social media platforms.

Most marketers and businesses also recommend that this ad is best when used by brands that intend to blend with their native content feed naturally. Any business or a person who sells a physical product that helps show off the brand in action. And lastly, someone is planning to dip their toes in TikTok advertising due to its simplicity.

Spark ads

This type of TikTok ad lets the brand and business promote their existingTikTok video content and user videos instead of composing a new campaign video from the grass root. The ads are not excepted from the first one since they also make the audience see it as genuine or organic content.

You can access them in the in-feed section without interrupting your regular activities. The user experience is considered in this TikTok ad. Besides redirecting the landing page, this ad can also link to the TikTok account. Any TikTok content is attributed to the authentic account; hence any viewer accessing them can reach out to the content creator directly.

Any engagement received on the ad, such as shares, likes, comments, etc., is attributed to the original content creator account, including followers. It always works so, regardless of whether it comes from the piece of content from a creator or brand. And Spark ads come with an analytic feature built-in for easy access to the campaign ROI.

Therefore, the spark ad can also have a call to action icon which redirects the viewers instead of the account page to access the landing page. You can also get the source where the audio in a campaign comes from with only a button click.

Spark ads are relevant when used to promote viral content resembling typical ads, any brand that wants to create social proof through partnerships with creators and highly established companies. Also, the ad is excellent when used by a company to expand the audience base and establish brand awareness instead of going for direct sales.

TopView Ads

These involve videos that appear immediately after you open the TikTok application. and they usually are 60 seconds long, generally known as the ‘ video first format.' These are ads while others are on another level, displayed on a full screen, and come with autoplay with the sound in the background. Also, the campaign can have a call to action icon inside the ad. to an extent, we can say that the ads are must-see because they tend to cover the whole screen.

These ads quickly interrupt the user experience on TikTok. Comparing its length and features, you can conclude that the ad is among the oldest and most traditional video ds on TikTok since they seem like a commercial in nature.

But that is not a reason to make them ineffective. They are ideal in various situations. Such include a firm with a big enough ad budget that tends to increase the price tag of products, a firm with experience in other ads, and a brand with an already existing ad but wants to repurpose their ads for the commercial and creative use, etc.

Brand Takeover Ads

Brand takeover ads are full-screen but appear on the FYP section once someone launches the TikTok application. They are made using images or videos lasting between 3 -5 seconds and aim to redirect the audience to the hashtag challenge, if not the landing page. Based on the objectives, a brand can select any two options. And the audience comes across only one ad per day, thus giving other ads room. However, they are expensive.

Thus, Brand takeover ads are effective when a brand wants to get the hashtag trending or build buzz when launching a product to drive traffic. A business with a reasonable ad budget that primarily targets maximizing its ad exposure with minimal competition.

Branded Hashtag Challenge Ads

This is the next TikTok ad type and involves sponsored hashtags challenges which mainly get featured on the discover page of the TikTok. This type of ad guarantees a more significant engagement outcome in your advertisement. They thus encourage the use of user-generated content as well.

These ads work differently. Once you click on the ad found at the top of the discover page, they redirect you to the hashtag challenge section with the description and procedure and the link to the website. You can then curate your perfect content and use the hashtag while promoting it.

The ad is perfect when used by a firm that intends to promote user-generated content. This business focuses on creating brand awareness to increase engagement and a firm with relevant experience promoting a hashtag.

Branded Effects

This is the last type of TikTok ad. they work like Instagram, where they let a brand or business curate a shareable sticker, special effect, or a filter through the TikTok platform to aim for self-promotion. Mostly, people combine this with other ads, as discussed above. In all cases, this ad with visuals is perfect for making the campaign look flashy and loud to get the attention of the TikTok audience.

Thus, the ads are perfect for increasing engagement and accessing more user-generated content. and it is good when sued by a business that wants to create an extended aesthetic and TikTok identity., a firm with multiple creative talents available, or a company that wants to try and maximize their brand exposure.

How to Advertise On TikTok

You need the TikTok Ads Manager tool to help yous et up an ad campaign on TikTok. If you do not have a TikTok ad manager account, you must create one before proceeding. And remember that you do not need this tool when your intention is only to boost the existing content on TikTok.

Otherwise, these are the steps you need to follow to run an ad on TikTok:

Step 1: Start by setting up the objective. So, log in to the TikTok ads manager and tap on the campaign icon. Then select between awareness, consideration, and conversion based on the objective you have at hand.

Step 2: They proceed to name the campaign and also set the budget. Ensure you use a name that is recognizable to the team members. You can select the limit when you prefer having specific budget limits on a particular ad.

Step 3: Then name the ad group and then select the placement. The campaign gives you ad groups of roughly 999. But you can still choose different placements for every ad group. However, not all the locations have placements.

Step 4: Then you can select if you need to use automated creative optimization. You can never upload the creative content you have until you reach a step to create particular ads. So, you can decide to either auto-generate multiple images, ad text, or videos.

Step 5: They set the target during dabs on different aspects such as location, age, languages, behavior, gender, etc.

Step 6: Set the ad group budget, and then schedule. This is different from setting a general campaign budget. But here, you narrow down to the ad groups and schedule how it should run. You can select based on your needs as daily and lifetime and set the start and end times once and for all. And if you clock on the under dayparting, you can select the particular time during which you need the ads displaying.

Step 7: Set the bidding strategy and its optimization. You need to select the optimization gaols first, which can be, a click or conversion goals. What determines the gaols is the campaign objective you selected. They choose the bidding strategy as the ad and finish by selecting the delivery type.

Step 8: Create your ads. Any ad group has a limit of up to 20 ads. Before finishing, you must work on selecting the ad format, adding new photos, and adding TikTok default thumbnails and ad captions.

What are the TikTok Ads Specs

While dealing with TikTok ads specs, we will tend to focus on the TikTok ads rather than based on the family.

Therefore, let us start with TikTok video ad specs:-

Supported files include mp4, MOV, MPEG, 3gp, and avi.
The duration ranges from 5 to 60 seconds. However, TikTok recommends between 21 to 34 seconds if you need to achieve top performance.
The maximum file size should be 500MB.
minimum resolution is either 640x640px and 540x960px. but also note that videos with 720 px have proved to perform best.
Regarding the aspect ratio, you can select 1:1, 16:9, or 9:16, where the vertical videos of aspect ratio 9:16 give better results.
The app or brand name should be between 4 to 40 characters for the app while the brand is 2 to 20.
Ad description should range between 1 to 100 characters without emojis included
And the profile image must be square, not below 50KB in size.

It accepts any aspect ratio, no minimum resolution, duration, and max file size for spark ad specs. And you can mention any emojis on the account where the display name and text are allowed to come from the original authentic post.

So, note that the character counts here majorly are based on Latin. However, the Asian character, the ads allow half of the Latin.

How Much Do TikTok Ads Cost

You might ask yourself the cost of TikTok ads. But we here tell you the price is based on the bidding model. Therefore, users can control the budget throughout their lifetime and the daily allocation of the ad group or campaign.

The minimum budget at the campaign level is daily $50, and the lifetime is $50 still. And at the ad group level, the daily budget is $20, while the lifetime is calculated by multiplying the daily budget by the number of days you wish to schedule.

Tiktok is very secretive in revealing its particular ad cost. However, here are some of the insights and tips to give you a hint:

The app even optimization has set its initial budget at a minimum of $100. That is 20x the target CPA, and either way is high.
If you use the cost cap or bid cap strategy, the initial campaign level has no limit on a budget but daily needs at least 20x your target cost per action.
And conversion campaign highlight the lowest cost bid where the least initial budget required is $100. equally, you can sue 20x the CPA. Both of which are high.

And today, TikTok has revealed some of the ad costs for a particular campaign. You can use them to benchmark the budget. For instance, the spark ads campaign run by the skincare brand synth labs intl drove 300,000 impressions at only $0.32 CPC, etc.

You must note that TikTok ad bases its cost calculation on the sales tax, depending on the region.

How to Track TikTok Ads Effectiveness

Once you set up the marketing campaign, you should not stop there. There is still more you need to do and track to find out that the ads are effective. Monitoring the success of a campaign can help you attain your goals.

Tiktok manager gives you access to two types of the results:

A micro-picture on the dashboards. It indicates the general information covering all the campaigns.
And on the campaign page, you can access more detailed information. You can get campaign results and accumulated information concerning the specific ad groups and ads.

TikTok Ads Dashboard

In all sections of the TikTok ads manager, dashboard ids where you must stop and check. You can access all the campaigns' details like trends, charts, spending, and placements. and if you want to explore it deeply, then here are some tips you need to conder:

You can monitor every action taken over time based on the management of a particular campaign. Thus, click on a log, head to today's spending section, and access the log icon.
You can also access the campaign status, particular ad, or ad group. Some might not have delivered, but others have active status. Active indicates the ad is displayed on the TikTok feeds while not delivered implies that the ad has been paused or stopped working.
You can also find the app event dashboard. From here, the apps are linked with the account presented. So, when you want to add to it, head to the assets section, click on events and then tap on the app. You will be able to access the overall in-app activities, recovery status, and statistics.
There is also a time zone selection box that you can use to track the account time zone/ any information you access is based on your time zone.
Performance metrics are more structured, but you can break them into particular dimensions based on the dayparting, gender, or OS.
And last, you can download or export data from the dashboard so that you can carry out a detailed analysis as well as editing.

Campaign

If you go to the campaign page, you can now access detailed information giving you access to the campaign results, ads, and ads group. The most crucial part of knowing here is how you can customize, view data, and filter.

Filter Campaigns

When you have multiple campaigns, you can utilize the filter options for easy management and access. So, simply head to the filter button, click on it, and choose different aspects from the drop-down menu to sort and locate the relevant campaign you need. You can also combine or change the elements and save your custom filters for future access.

Customize Data View

You can create the basic layout of the ads and adapt it based on your needs by customizing the column. Tap on the custom column campaign and choose relevant data. After that, drag then drops to change the order of column appearance. Then you also have options to save the settings for future use.

View Data

The last action you can take here is to access the audience analysis and performance. Just go to the views data icon and tap on it. And under each campaign, ad group, or ad, there is this button. Then when you click on it, you will see a panel open up so that you can make adjustments on the period or dates.

You also can change the display of the chart. Click on different dimensions changes the display of the graph. Thus you can access the chart based on the click rate, impression, total cost, clicks, CPC, CPM, conversion costs, etc. On the breakdown tab, you can access the data performance divided into age, gender, area, interest or placement, etc.

Conclusion

TikTok ads are very vital in marketing campaigns. It increases brand awareness, attracts people to the business, and improves the conversion rate, increasing the sales and revenue of a business. The ads on TikTok are moving the marketing strategy faster if you know the target audience.

Our article highlighted the different types of ads and how to check the effectiveness of a campaign. Read and grasp and keep it in practice to revamp your marketing strategy today.