Introducing Search Ads Campaign powered by Smart+

The search landscape is changing, with more than half of people now preferring to research products on video and social platforms rather than through traditional browsers.¹ This shift is clearly visible on TikTok, where 57% of users use TikTok's search functionality and 23% search for something within 30 seconds of opening the app.²

As search behaviors evolve, TikTok provides advertisers with new opportunities to connect with audiences throughout their discovery and decision-making journey. With Search Ads Campaigns, businesses can tap into TikTok's immersive search environment to engage people as they explore interests, evaluate options, and take action.

What is Search Ads Campaign?

Designed to give advertisers maximum control and transparency, Search Ads Campaigns help businesses connect with people actively searching on TikTok.

Search Ads Campaigns are now powered by Smart+, bringing the benefits of flexible automation and improved workflow efficiencies, such as creative flexibility & automation and enhanced reporting. This helps advertisers reduce the work required to manage and optimize campaigns while matching relevant ads with people actively expressing intent.

Search Ads Campaign currently supports Traffic, Sales, Lead Generation, and App Promotion, enabling advertisers to optimize for scale and performance.

Why use Search Ads Campaigns on TikTok?

Search Ads Campaign gives brands an opportunity to connect with people while they are actively exploring content—whether they are looking for something specific or discovering something unexpected along the way.

With extensive keyword targeting, flexible bidding capabilities, creative automation, and dedicated search budget management, advertisers can capture different forms of intent across a broad range of search queries and meet people where they are.

1. Convert customers when they're most curious

People search on TikTok with a variety of motivations, from researching products and comparing options to discovering new ideas and acting on inspiration. Search Ads Campaign helps advertisers show up during these moments of curiosity and consideration. Its planning and optimization capabilities make it easier to align advertising with the different ways people search, helping brands turn active interest into meaningful engagement and conversions.

2. Capture diverse user intent across search queries

TikTok's diverse search landscape allows advertisers to connect with audiences across a wide variety of interests, needs, and stages of the decision journey. Search Ads Campaign provides extensive keyword targeting, bidding capabilities, creative flexibility, and search budget management. Smart+ automation across keywords and creative makes it easier to match the right message with the right person while giving advertisers control over key campaign decisions.

3. Unlock incremental value

Based on our testing, advertisers that run Search Ads alongside In-Feed Ads see a 20% increase in conversions on average, at a similar or better cost per acquisition.³ Additionally, 18% of users who see an In-Feed Ad but do not initially convert ultimately complete the conversion after seeing the corresponding Search Ad.³ Search Ads Campaign is designed to complement this user journey, giving advertisers another way to engage people as their intent develops. For brands, that means more opportunities to capture demand and generate incremental results.

Where do the ads appear?

A typical search journey begins when someone taps the search button at the top of the For You page and enters a query. TikTok then displays a series of relevant search results, with Search Ads appearing alongside the organic content. Once a user clicks on a Search Ad, they are able to continue scrolling through the search results in the order they appear on the page.

How to activate a Search Ads Campaign on TikTok

Search Ads Campaign is available in TikTok Ads Manager. After selecting your objective, choose Search campaign to enter a dedicated setup flow.

Advertisers can use search-specific planning and targeting features, including a keyword suggestion tool and the option to exclude negative keywords. Smart+ can then help automate keyword expansion and creative selection to improve relevance and unlock additional scale.

Search Ads Campaign supports both video and image carousel assets, and advertisers can use a mix of these formats within a single ad group. Smart+ helps enhance the most relevant creative to a person's search, using the advertiser's targeted keywords and available assets as inputs.

Advertisers can activate, deactivate, and edit keywords and creative assets during setup or while a campaign is running. This combination of automation and advertiser input makes it possible to respond to changing search behavior while maintaining control over campaign strategy.

Automation powered by Smart+

Smart+ brings advanced automation to the search ads buying process, helping advertisers improve relevance and performance across keywords and creative.

• Automated keywords: Advertisers can enable automated keywords after selecting their initial keyword set. The feature helps campaigns identify additional searches relevant to the selected creative, expanding reach beyond manually chosen keywords.

• Creative automation: Unlock the best creatives for your business goals through features such as Recommended Creatives, Automatic Enhancements, and Auto-Selection.

Tips for a successful Search Ads Campaign

Choose relevant keywords

Keywords are the backbone of Search Ads Campaign. Make sure your ad groups have at least 20 keywords, and that they're bundled thematically to fit with the ad creative that will be served in search results.

Spark interest with ad creative

When a user searches for a term that matches your keyword, they'll see a preview of your ad on the search results page. Make sure the ad creative is geared towards driving engagement and click-throughs.

Set appropriate bids and budgets

Make sure your bids are appropriate for your campaign budgets. A budget-to-bid ratio of 20:1 is recommended to ensure keywords can be competitive in Search Ads auctions.

Optimize your campaigns over time to improve efficiency and scale

Search Ads Campaign is not a set-and-forget campaign type. With many Search Ads living as evergreen placements, we recommend that advertisers frequently review performance and make optimizations to keyword selection, bids, budgets, and creative, so that the campaigns grow and evolve with TikTok search dynamics and trends.

Supercharge brand discovery through search

We're continuously innovating the TikTok search experience to provide more ways for brands to connect and engage with the TikTok community. With Search Ads Campaign powered by Smart+, brands now have increased control over their targeting to ensure they show up next to content relevant to their business, product, or service, while providing users with a more personalized ad experience.

Search Ads Campaign is currently available in the US and testing in other markets. Learn more about availability and campaign setup in the Help Center.

Sources

1. TikTok Marketing Science Global TikTok as a Discovery Engine Study 2023, conducted by Material

2. TikTok Internal Data, US users, June 2024

3. TikTok Internal Data, July 2024