TikTok (Tik Tok) advertising for a small brand: setup, budgets and bidding

How TikTok advertising works

TikTok advertising is the paid side of TikTok: ads you build, target and pay for in TikTok Ads Manager, shown to people as they scroll. The ads in this guide are bought in an auction. Each time an ad could be shown, it competes with other ads, and TikTok's auction ranks them by bid price and relevance to people. What you end up paying depends on your bid, your budget, the audience you choose and how many other advertisers want the same viewers.

TikTok Ads Manager organizes ads into three parts: campaigns, ad groups and ads, and TikTok lets you set budgets at both the campaign and ad group level. The table shows what you decide at each level.

How to advertise on TikTok: set up Ads Manager

These steps follow TikTok's setup guide for self-serve advertisers.

1. Create a login

   Go to TikTok's advertising signup page and create a login with an email address or phone number and a password. TikTok sends a verification code to confirm it.

2. Create the advertiser account

   TikTok asks for your country or region, industry, legal business name, time zone, phone number and currency. The legal business name must match your actual business name or the account may not be approved, so use the name on your business registration rather than your shop's brand name if the two differ.

3. Add billing and choose how you pay

   With automatic payment, you are billed when you reach your billing threshold or bill date, whichever comes first. Manual payment needs a 100% advance deposit before ads run. For a US account paying in US dollars, manual payment accepts Venmo, PayPal, or a credit or debit card. Choose with care: automatic payment cannot be switched back to manual payment.

4. Wait for account review

   The new account is submitted for review automatically, and review takes less than 24 hours for most accounts. You can build campaigns while you wait, but ads do not run until the account is approved.

5. Install the TikTok Pixel on your store

   The TikTok Pixel is a piece of code on your website that shares website events with TikTok. TikTok recommends events that cover the whole visit, from viewing a product page to adding an item to a cart and making a purchase. Set it up before you launch a Sales campaign that sends people to your website.

Campaign objectives: which one a product brand should pick

The objective tells TikTok which result to look for, and it decides how you can be charged. Ads Manager sorts its objectives into three categories: awareness, consideration and conversion.

For a brand that sells products, Sales is the objective that looks for buyers. TikTok describes it as a way to sell products from your TikTok Shop, website and app, so you do not need a TikTok Shop to run it. Traffic aims to send more people to a destination on your website or app, and a visit is not an order. Reach and Video views suit a launch where you want people to see the product before you ask them to order.

TikTok ads cost: minimum campaign and ad group budgets

With TikTok ads, you decide how much to spend and the auction decides what each result costs. You pick one of two budget types. A daily budget is the average amount you are willing to spend on the campaign or ad group per day. A lifetime budget is the total amount you are willing to spend over the whole run of the campaign or ad group; with a lifetime budget, spend may not be even across days, but it will not exceed the lifetime total.

TikTok sets a minimum for each level, and the budget must exceed it.

The ad group lifetime rule adds up quickly. TikTok's own example is $620 for an ad group in a 31-day campaign. Past days count, so extending a running ad group raises its minimum too.

For web conversion campaigns, TikTok recommends more than the minimum: an ad group budget of at least $30 a day for brands in North America, Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

Three budget rules catch new advertisers. TikTok says the campaign budget should not be lower than the ad group budget. When an ad group spends its budget, ad delivery pauses automatically, and to restart it you increase the budget or extend the schedule. You can change the amount at any time, but you cannot switch between daily and lifetime budget once a campaign or ad group is live, so TikTok suggests you start with a daily budget to monitor performance before committing to a lifetime budget.

TikTok advertising prices: bidding and how you are charged

The budget sets how much you spend. The bid strategy sets how TikTok spends it in the auction. Ads Manager offers two main bid strategies:

• Maximum Results aims to deliver the most conversions within your budget. You set only the budget.
• Target Cost per Result aims for a cost per action (CPA) that you set. Use it once you know what an order can cost you.

oCPM is the default billing method for conversion and app install objectives, so by default a Sales campaign is billed by impression while TikTok looks for people likely to order.

Your budget and bid have to match. With Maximum Results, TikTok's guideline is a daily budget of 10 times your average daily CPA from the past 7 days. With Target Cost per Result, set the budget to at least 10 times the CPA bid, and if the ad group is not spending its budget, raise the bid by at least 20%.

A new account has no cost history, so there is no cost per order to target yet. TikTok's advice is to use Maximum Results if you do not have a specific cost per result goal, and in the bidding settings a blank Target CPA field uses Maximum Results.

Campaign Budget Optimization: when to switch it on

Campaign Budget Optimization, or CBO, gives you one campaign budget shared by all ad groups in the campaign. It is a toggle you turn on when you create the campaign. TikTok's aim with it is to maximize budget use and conversions at the campaign level instead of the ad group level.

CBO needs several ad groups: it does not work with only one active ad group. TikTok's guidance is 3-5 active ad groups per campaign, with 2-3 creatives in each. Once it is on, TikTok suggests you wait at least three days or 50 conversions between changes, and keep each change within 30% of the daily budget.

For one product and one audience, leave it off and set the budget on the ad group. Turn it on when you test several audiences or products side by side.

Video ad specs and ad review

The table lists TikTok's specs for standard in-feed video ads, which TikTok calls Non-Spark Ads: the videos you upload yourself rather than run from an existing post.

Spark Ads work differently. They run an existing organic post as an ad, and their captions are taken from the organic video's caption.

Every ad goes through review before it runs, within 24 hours for most ads. Review looks at the product, the ad content, the targeted market and age group, and the landing page, so the product and offer in the video should match what the landing page shows.

TikTok ads for small business: a first campaign

An example setup for a small product brand selling on its own website with the Pixel installed, built from TikTok's own guidance.

1. One Sales campaign, no CBO

   Choose the Sales objective and send people to your website. Leave Campaign Budget Optimization off, because CBO does not work with only one active ad group.

2. One ad group with a budget you can hold

   Set the ad group budget to at least $30 a day, TikTok's recommendation for web conversion campaigns in North America, rather than the $20 floor. Pick a budget you can keep running for a few weeks without pausing.

3. Maximum Results bidding

   Use Maximum Results: in the bidding settings, a blank Target CPA field uses Maximum Results. Once you know your real cost per order, you can move to Target Cost per Result.

4. Several vertical videos

   Add a few vertical videos (9:16, at least 540x960px) that show the product in use in the first seconds. Different openings give TikTok more to test than one video does.

5. Leave it alone through the learning phase

   TikTok says performance usually starts to settle after about 25 campaign results or 7 days. During that time, avoid pausing campaigns or ad groups, edits that restart learning, and unreasonable budget or creative volumes.

6. Raise the budget in small steps

   If cost per order holds, increase the budget no more than 40% per adjustment while the campaign is still learning, and no more than 30% per adjustment after it has exited. Make changes no more often than every two days.

Where Nation fits

Questions about TikTok advertising