TikTok Shop ads: how GMV Max campaigns work

What TikTok Shop ads are now

TikTok Shop ads are paid campaigns that send shoppers to products in your TikTok Shop or to your livestream. Since July 2025, they run as GMV Max campaigns. GMV stands for gross merchandise value, the total value of the orders. A GMV Max campaign optimizes for total channel ROI for your TikTok Shop.

When you create ads with the Sales objective and your TikTok Shop as the sales destination, you can no longer create, edit or duplicate LIVE Shopping Ads, Product Shopping Ads and Video Shopping Ads. TikTok says existing campaigns in the old formats stay active. If you upgrade an old campaign from the notices in Ads Manager, your historical ROI results become the target ROI.

The main change for a seller is control. TikTok's own comparison shows it for livestreams: LIVE Shopping Ads asked for profile, budget, schedule, optimization goal, bidding strategy, targeting and creative selection, while LIVE GMV Max asks only for profile, budget and start time, plus an ROI target. The system does the rest, and the campaign spends within your ROI target's range.

Product GMV Max and LIVE GMV Max side by side

There are two GMV Max campaign types. Product GMV Max promotes products from your shop. LIVE GMV Max promotes a livestream from one TikTok account. The table sets out how they differ, as TikTok's help articles describe them.

The country lists come from TikTok's Seller Center setup articles for each campaign type. If LIVE GMV Max does not appear in your Seller Center, check the help article for your market.

How to set up a Product GMV Max campaign

You create GMV Max campaigns in Seller Center, under Shop Ads. You can also create GMV Max campaigns in TikTok Ads Manager. These steps follow the Seller Center flow.

1. Clear the products first

   If a product already runs in another Shop Ads campaign, remove the product from other Video Shopping Ad, Product Shopping Ad or GMV Max campaigns first.

2. Open Shop Ads

   In Seller Center, open Shop Ads, choose Create GMV Max ads and then Promote products.

3. Choose the products

   Choose Promote all products in TikTok Shop, or +Add product to choose specific products. TikTok's best practices note that broader product inclusion helps maximize delivery and GMV.

4. Set the ROI target

   Use the recommended target or enter your own. TikTok's guidance: lower targets raise delivery and GMV; higher targets may limit spend.

5. Set the daily budget

   Product GMV Max uses a daily budget. Use the recommended amount or your own figure.

6. Schedule and publish

   Pick a start date and time. The campaign runs continuously from the scheduled start time until you turn it off.

How to choose a GMV Max ROI target and budget

ROI in GMV Max is the GMV a campaign counts divided by what it spends on ads. Example: an ROI target of 4 means you want $4 of sales for every $1 of ads. The target is the main lever you have, because GMV Max automates creative selection, audience settings and placement options itself.

TikTok's best-practice article gives two starting formulas for Product GMV Max. The recommended ROI target is historical non-LIVE GMV divided by historical ad cost. The recommended daily budget is 2 × historical non-LIVE GMV ÷ ROI target.

Example: a shop with $3,000 of non-LIVE GMV and $600 of ad cost over the same period has a historical ROI of 5, so the recommended budget is 2 × $3,000 ÷ 5, or $1,200.

Once the campaign runs, TikTok suggests these rules for Product GMV Max:

• Keep budget consumption below 80%, and raise the budget when results improve.
• Hold each ROI target for at least three full days before you change it, because each change interrupts learning.
• If you have no sales history, use the system's recommended ROI and budget as the starting point.
• Use Auto-select videos, recommended over manual selection. Include affiliate videos, because affiliate videos often perform better and improve incremental GMV.

A lower target gets spend moving and a higher one protects margin, since lower targets raise delivery and GMV; higher targets may limit spend. Work out the lowest ROI your margin can carry before you pick a number, using your product cost, shipping and TikTok Shop fees.

How LIVE GMV Max works for livestream sellers

LIVE GMV Max promotes one TikTok account's livestream. In Seller Center you choose the account, set gross revenue as the goal, enter a LIVE ROI target and a daily budget, and schedule it. Video-to-LIVE uses videos from your TikTok account to attract viewers to your liveroom, and LIVE-to-LIVE uses your ongoing livestream to attract more viewers into the same livestream. TikTok says both creative types are used and allocated automatically.

Starting a LIVE GMV Max campaign changes your other ads. When a shop's primary ad account has an active LIVE GMV Max campaign, existing LIVE Shopping Ads for the shop's official TikTok account are paused automatically. TikTok notes that paused ads do not restart automatically after the LIVE GMV Max campaign ends.

TikTok's LIVE best practices:

• Run the campaign over a minimum of three days. TikTok adds that the campaign does not need to run continuously.
• Set the budget from the system recommendation, or two to three times higher than your historical LIVE ads budget. TikTok notes that the budget is not fully used unless the campaign can roughly meet the ROI target.
• If spend is slow one day after launch, lower the ROI target. If spend is fast, consider increasing the campaign budget or the ROI target.
• Use a profile with strong LIVE sales. TikTok treats approximately $1000 gross revenue in the last 7 days as strong.
• Stream on a fixed pattern and keep livestream timing and duration consistent across campaign days. Sessions of 3 hours or more generally grow faster.
• Feed Video-to-LIVE with at least 50-70 videos each time, or 5-10 new videos a day, and mark up to 10 preferred videos for each stream.

ROI protection: when TikTok pays back ad credit

ROI protection gives you ad credits when a GMV Max campaign misses its target. It covers campaigns created in Seller Center (PC), the Seller Center mobile app and TikTok Ads Manager from February 25, 2026.

A campaign qualifies on a day when its ROI is below 90% of the daily target ROI and it has more than 20 daily orders. The credit is total cost minus total gross revenue ÷ (daily ROI target × 0.9), and the ad credit is added to the account automatically. In the ROI protection column, eligible campaigns show ROI protected in the Campaign list. TikTok keeps a 60-day history of daily detail.

These cases are not covered:

• Product GMV Max: manually raising the ROI target, or lowering it more than once in a day, for the day you make the change.
• LIVE GMV Max: adjusting the ROI target more than 2 times in a day, for the day you make the change.
• The day of pausing or deleting the campaign, and days when campaign products are edited.
• Campaigns with products or liverooms using Max delivery, and creative boost budgets and LIVE viewer boost budgets.
• Days with a suspended or stopped shop, ad account or ads, including for insufficient account balance.

In practice, ROI protection rewards leaving a campaign alone. Set a target you can live with and change it rarely.

Creatives, affiliates and organic orders

GMV Max builds ads from the videos it can use. TikTok says the more videos with product anchors, the greater the GMV potential, and suggests you link additional TikTok accounts and add Spark Ads posts to the Creative Library. Product GMV Max also includes authorized affiliate videos that feature your selected products, and those affiliate videos receive a commercial content label.

Product GMV Max also counts orders that did not come from a paid view. Because all orders of advertised products, including organic and affiliate orders are attributed to the campaign, its dashboard ROI covers more than ad clicks. TikTok's own advice is to review total shop GMV to identify incremental gains after activation, so compare total shop GMV before and after you start, not only the campaign figure.

Where Nation fits

Questions about TikTok Shop ads and GMV Max