TikTok is among the most downloaded and widely used apps in recent memory, making it a valuable platform for advertising, particularly if you want to target younger Millennial and Gen Z audiences.

Despite the fact that TikTok ads are still a relatively new form of advertising, brands can easily test them out thanks to the TikTok self-serve platform.

You can learn how to make a TikTok ad, how much money you’ll need, and which businesses should use them in this guide. Additionally, you’ll receive a list of best practices and see some motivational TikTok advertising examples so that you can begin developing effective campaigns for 2022 and beyond.

Who should use TikTok to advertise in 2022?

Advertising on TikTok is encouraged for anyone who wants to reach a younger demographic.

However, TikTok is no longer just for teenagers. These are TikTok’s main demographics:

• In Malaysia 57.6% of users are 18 to 24 years old, and 38.7% are between 25 and 34. Less than 4% of users are over 35.

• Even those who aren’t frequent users of TikTok have a positive opinion of the app.

• TikTok is one of the most widely used social media networking sites in the world, with over 60% of monthly active users in the US being female.

Over 2 billion people have downloaded TikTok as of this year, and the platform’s growth doesn’t appear to be slowing down anytime soon.

As a result, more businesses are investing in TikTok ads, both in terms of quantity and the range of goods they are promoting.

TikTok is a great option if you want to develop global campaigns for an audience that is primarily young.

Types of TikTok Ads

TikTok Ad formats come in a variety of forms that advertisers can utilize. Let’s examine each of them in more detail.

1. Top View Ads

A user’s feed will have Top View ads at the very top. When they open the app, it is the first video they see.

This format provides tremendous visibility and works well for campaigns to draw attention to brands.

TikTok claims that this ad format has a 67% higher sales effectiveness than other ad types and ranks first in terms of engagement.

2. In-Feed Ads

Users can view these advertisements as they browse their For You feeds. They are in-context, full-screen advertisements with sound. Make your ad entertaining and engaging to attract as much attention as popular organic content since your audience is already engaged and watching videos. One of the most popular TikTok advertising formats is this one.

3. Branded Hashtag Ads

Branded Hashtag Ads are another well-liked option. They provide a “TikTok challenge” centered on your brand hashtag in an effort to increase on-platform engagement.

These advertisements may be particularly effective at increasing platform user-generated content and brand recognition.

4. Personalized Effect Ads

Similar to filter ads on other platforms, Branded Effect Ads operate in a similar manner. Users can add branded AR “effects” to their own videos that are created by brands.

Another campaign that has the potential to increase interaction, brand recognition, and user-generated content is this one. These campaigns typically aim to raise awareness (rather than traffic or conversions).

5. Spark ads

A relatively new ad format called Spark Ads enables advertisers to use user-generated content (UGC) and organic content in their advertising. Similar to boosted posts on other platforms, they work similarly. You can use user-generated content (with the creator’s consent) or allocate advertising funds to support your own original content.

These advertisements send users to a landing page that is not on the platform or your account page.

How to set up TikTok campaigns and ads

You’ll first need to register for a business account here in order to create your first TikTok advertising campaign.

1.  Make a TikTok ads account.

You’ll need an ad account before you run your first advertisement.

1. Visit the landing page for TikTok for Business, click Get Started, and select your region and business category. Next, select Next.

2. Complete the form, then click “Sign Up.”

You’ll be questioned about your company’s contact information, legal name, and description after answering a few additional questions. After entering your information, you can start using the service.

2. Establish your campaign.

You follow a hierarchy when creating an ad in TikTok’s advertising system by first creating a campaign, then an ad group, and then an ad.

1. Click Create under the Campaign tab in the Ads Manager dashboard’s top menu.

2. Decide on your goal.

You can select an objective from one of three categories: awareness, consideration, or conversions, depending on what your marketing goal is.

Goal-specific advertising objectives are included for each category:

Reach is a subcategory of Awareness. Choose this goal if you want to put getting your advertisement in front of all others.

• There are three goals in the Consideration category: traffic (bringing visitors to your website), app installs, and on-platform video views.

• There is only one goal in the Conversion category: conversions. You can use it to optimize for particular conversions, such as sales or email sign-ups.

You only need to do that to start a campaign. You will continue to move to the ad group section on TikTok automatically.

3. Establish your ad group.

1. Select the promotion type (website or app install) and enter your URL. Then, specify how you want users to interact with your ads after entering your display name and adding a profile picture.

2. Pick an advertisement placement.

TikTok will test various options to determine what works for your audience at the best prices, so auto-placement is the simplest option for your first advertisement.

Placements within TikTok, the NewsFeed app series (including on websites like BuzzVideo), and the international network Pangle are all examples of manual placement options. Any option can be made active or inactive.

3. Configure various ad options.

You can prevent your advertisement from showing up on particular websites by using brand safety features. Additionally, you can choose whether or not to enable user comments and whether or not you want users to be able to download your TikTok video advertisement.

4. Make a decision regarding the automated creative optimization feature on TikTok.

 One of the tools TikTok developed for small businesses is this one. Using your photos, videos, and copy, it creates ad variations and tests them repeatedly for you. Although some brands gain more from manual control and creative split testing, testing is still worthwhile.

5. Identify your target market.

Based on demographics, location, interests, device type, and in-app behavior, you can target specific audiences.

If you want to advertise your new Korean restaurant, you could choose to target young teenagers who love spicy food and are between the ages of 19 and 25.

You can include and exclude audiences based on their various traits. You might choose to target users who fall into your ideal demographics but omit users who have previously made purchases from you if you only want to reach cold audiences, for instance.

Additionally, you can build a custom audience using the information in your customer database, website traffic, app activity, or prior ad engagement.

You must install the TikTok pixel on your website in order to create a custom audience from website traffic. The pixel also enables you to improve your advertising and link the effectiveness of your campaigns to user behavior on your website.

6. Decide whether to create a daily or yearly budget (find out more about TikTok ad budget settings here).

7. Create a bid strategy.

You have the option of capping your bid in the auction, which ensures that you will never pay more for a given action (like a click or a certain number of video views) than the cap you establish.

8. Click Next to start creating a new ad.

4. Make TikTok advertisements.

1. Upload your advertising artwork. Both image and video files can be a part of this. You can use TikTok to convert still photos into videos. Make sure to adhere to TikTok’s creative guidelines for ads.

2. Type in your call to action and ad text.

3. To submit your campaign for review, click Submit.

Each advertisement on TikTok will be compared to their policies. To ensure that your ads are approved during the initial review, use the following checklist.

What are the prices of TikTok ads?

The truth is that costs vary based on the ad type you select, your bid, and the market itself, so there isn’t one straightforward answer to the question of how much TikTok Ads cost.

TikTok uses a bidding system for its advertising, like the majority of platforms for paid advertising. This indicates that there is competition in the market and that you are betting against other advertisers to reach particular audiences and placements. Simply put, the second person will get the placement if the first person is willing to pay RM7 and the second person is willing to pay RM7.01

TikTok aids advertisers in bidding optimization, so they can take care of bidding settings to improve ad deliverability.

The only drawback to this is that you might end up paying more for advertisements than you intended. You can either optimize for “lowest cost” results or set a bid cap to stop this from happening. The latter, however, might lead to clicks or placements of lower quality that are less likely to produce the desired results.

Additionally, you can create a daily or yearly budget. Establishing a lifetime budget of RM 1500 will stop you from exceeding it if you never want to spend more than that on an advertising campaign.

However, there are some TikTok ad cost benchmarks that we do have.

According to AdAge, high-cost ad formats like Branded Hashtag Ads and Branded Effect Ads can be extremely expensive, costing brands anywhere between RM50,000 and RM150,000.

Self-serve ad options with prices more in line with traditional social advertising include Top View and In-Feed Ads. We’ve seen prices range from RM1 to RM10 per action, and you must spend a minimum of RM100 per ad group each day.

TikTok ad specs

The TikTok ad specifications for typical In-Feed and Top-View TikTok ads are as follows:

• The duration of the video must be between 5 and 60 seconds.

• File sizes are limited to 500MB (except for Spark Ads, where no max file size applies).

• 16:9 is the horizontal aspect ratio (the recommended file size is 960 x 540 pixels).

• 1:1 is the square aspect ratio (the recommended file size is 640 x 640 pixels).

• 9:16 is the vertical aspect ratio (the recommended file size is 540 x 960 pixels).

• It is advised to only use file types ending in.mp4,.mov,.mpeg,.avi, or.gif.

To accommodate profile pictures, CTA buttons, and other elements that will appear above the ad, make sure to leave margins in the top (at least 130 pixels), bottom (up to 484 pixels), and left (44 pixels) of your creatives.

TikTok advertising guidelines and case studies

On TikTok, making an in-feed advertisement is simple. It can be a little more difficult to efficiently create an advertisement that draws in new fans and clients. The following considerations should be made as you start your first TikTok advertising campaign.

• Be sincere

Your ads will need to have some flair on a platform where it is stated that sharing creativity is the goal. However, you cannot compromise your brand identity in the name of creativity.

TikTok states in their Business Help Center that they want you to be genuine. “Creative should reflect your brand’s image and appeal to your target market. You get the idea. Serious brands should run serious advertisements, and trendy brands should run trendy advertisements.

Embrace the playful side of your brand if it exists. As a part of their #guidance campaign, Chipotle used influencer marketing. This campaign was successful because it was lighthearted, fun, and true to the company’s identity.

• Engage influencers (wisely)

Creators who will collaborate with you to spread your message to their audience are known as influencers. If you choose wisely, your TikTok advertising investment will yield significant returns.

Consider the following when choosing the right influencer:

• Relevance. A makeup tutorial influencer might not be the best choice to market your energy drink.

• Influence. Their number of followers and engagement metrics (likes, shares) are important.

• Location. You want your products to be available to an influencer’s primary audience, whether your brand is local or global.

Influencers can be found on the Discovery page’s Users tab. Simply type a subject into the search bar.

Influencers can be found on the Discovery page’s Users tab. Simply type a subject into the search bar. You can immediately see how many followers they have. To view additional engagement metrics, such as the number of times their videos have been liked, click on their profile.

Additionally, TikTok provides Creator Marketplace, a one-stop shop for brand/influencer partnerships. There, you can filter your search for the ideal influencer match based on the metrics that are important to you.

• Use Smart Video Soundtrack

TikTok provides a free creative tool called Smart Video Soundtrack. It automatically selects the best music for your video.

Music can increase the discoverability of your advertisement in addition to making it more entertaining for the viewer. Users can browse all videos that feature a particular sound, which explains why. Audio tracks are comparable to hashtags on TikTok.

Adding music to your ads is now easier and less risky thanks to Smart Video Soundtrack. Simply upload your video to your advertisement, and Smart Video Soundtrack will select the perfect song from its 900+ song collection.

You can even test different songs to see which works best for your advertisements.

• Make a statement with upbeat music

Fast-moving graphics and music can make your content stand out in users’ scrolling feeds. Try out this easy tip with a few of your self-serve ad campaigns to see how it affects your ads’ fun and excitement levels.

• Encourage users to use their imagination

Make sure you provide an experience that will actually excite your audience if you’re running a campaign with the intention of going viral or increasing engagement.

Motivate the audience. How can they personalize the challenge or impact?

Essie, a cosmetics company, organized a hashtag competition in which participants had to submit original nail art.

The hashtag associated with Essie has now received over 9 billion views.

• Think about your delivery options carefully

You can choose from a variety of deliverability options when setting up your ad group.

One is dayparting, which enables you to restrict the times your ads are displayed to during the day or to particular days of the week.

Even though you can test anything you think might help your campaigns, this strategy will typically work best if customers can only click on ads during specific hours. A college town’s after-hours taxi service, for instance, might only run advertisements from Thursday through Sunday when people are getting ready to go out, or a restaurant that offers delivery when it is actually open.

Accelerated ad delivery is an additional choice (standard ad delivery is the default). Although this may sound alluring, you should proceed cautiously because accelerated delivery spreads out your ad spend as quickly as possible while occasionally lowering the quality of placements in order to generate results more quickly.  

Even though you can test anything you think might help your campaigns, this strategy will typically work best if customers can only click on ads during specific hours. A college town’s after-hours taxi service, for instance, might only run advertisements from Thursday through Sunday when people are getting ready to go out, or a restaurant that offers delivery when it is actually open.

Accelerated ad delivery is an additional choice (standard ad delivery is the default). Although this may sound alluring, you should proceed cautiously because accelerated delivery spreads out your ad spend as quickly as possible while occasionally lowering the quality of placements in order to generate results more quickly.

Because of this, accelerated delivery might only be beneficial if you have a tight deadline, such as if you need to immediately reach as many people as possible for an upcoming event.

• Consider what functions and adjust as necessary.

It’s essential to track your campaigns to identify the successful ones so you can build on your success in the future.

Your ads’ status and effectiveness are listed on a dashboard that you can access by logging into TikTok’s Ad Manager.

The following information can be found here:

• The status of your ads and campaigns;

• Your overall conversions, CPC, CPM , CTR, CPA, and other metrics.

• The amount of money you are currently spending on advertisements.

Even better, you can export the outcomes with a single click for more in-depth analysis.

You can view more specific results, all the way down to the individual ad level, in the Campaign tab.

Closing Remarks

Unexpected connections between some unlikely brands and TikTok’s young, artistic audience are occurring. And they’re achieving this by fusing a steady stream of original content with their paid TikTok ads.

It is important for other companies to learn from TikTok’s success and join in on the fun. Give your channel the kind of content that TikTok users come to see. This will give your new audience a reason to stick around for a while when your paid advertisement greatly increases interest in your brand.