How to measure campaign performance on TikTok

TikTok is an entertainment platform that drives impact beyond just engagement on the app. Over a billion people worldwide come to TikTok to be entertained, inspired, educated and now shop. TikTok is effective at reaching audiences throughout the decision journey and influencing behaviour to drive business outcomes - from discovery to conversion, and everything in between.

Strong performance results from accurate measurement

The power of discovery on TikTok spurs users to take a series of actions on and off-platform, creating a challenge for advertisers to attribute channel effectiveness easily and accurately.

Measurement approaches and ecosystems are evolving alongside businesses' efforts to meet changing consumer demand, and effective marketing starts long before a consumer is ready to purchase. People have choice in how they discover, research and transact with their favorite brands - whether online, through an app or in a physical store - which creates challenges for advertisers to attribute marketing value easily and accurately.

Independent research from Fospha earlier this year found that TikTok was the "most undervalued of the top-spend channels when using last click measurement," and that the bottom-of-funnel significantly benefits from the platform's 'halo effect.' The study found that:¹

• TikTok drove 788% more conversions in Q1 than last click claims

• TikTok creates a halo effect, driving 22% of sales credited to bottom-of-funnel

• Misattributing TikTok's impact not only leads to missed revenue potential but also perpetuates a cycle of underinvestment in paid social – especially the higher funnel.

The report highlighted TikTok's pivotal role in driving e-commerce sales, adding that last click attribution disproportionately benefits direct, organic search, and brand search over all paid social channels, but it particularly masks the role that higher-funnel channels like TikTok play.

Marketing attribution data from TransUnion found that 64% of consumers who see TikTok ads and end up making a purchase were only exposed to TikTok, suggesting there is minimal audience overlap with other advertising channels.² This insight reinforces the need for marketers to evolve their approach to measurement.

Having a robust measurement plan is essential to your marketing strategy. It starts with establishing safe and reliable data connections to power high-performing, personalized ads, and then adopting the right measurement tools to capture the true impact driven by each of your marketing channels.

A simple formula for success

TikTok's holistic suite of measurement solutions is designed to give you choice, control and transparency into your ad impact across the marketing funnel. Regardless of the size or maturity of your business, you'll find ways to measure impact across three key stages of growth:

1. Prove TikTok works: Solutions to help you make smarter budget decisions by measuring TikTok's true value beyond last-click attribution.

2. Refine your strategy: Solutions to help you optimize channel performance, and test-and-learn frameworks designed to improve ROI to get more for your dollar.

3. Grow your business: Tools to help you understand complex consumer behavior on and off TikTok, and identify growth levers for scaling your campaigns.

How to measure performance campaigns on TikTok

For performance campaigns, you can combine different measurement solutions synergistically to gain data-driven insights that contribute to your larger business objectives.

1. Measurement solutions to prove TikTok works

If you are just getting started with performance on TikTok, post-purchase surveys are a turn-key solution to help you understand the value of your TikTok campaigns. They allow you to hear directly from your customers to understand what influenced their purchase decisions, and are a great beginner tool to evaluate performance.

If you're looking to up-level your cross-channel attribution and dig deeper into what makes customers take action, multi-touch attribution can help you understand how different touchpoints in your customer journey contribute to conversions.

For advertisers who make decisions based on incremental returns, TikTok's Conversion Lift Study gives a scientific view into the value driven by your TikTok campaigns. Clients meeting participation criteria for lift studies are provided an estimated campaign size and corresponding budget for the study, wherein users are randomly split into one of two groups, either having the ad loaded in their TikTok feed ('treatment') or having it removed ('control'). Conversions are then compared across the two groups to understand if the ad had an impact in driving users to take action. This advanced solution may not be applicable to all advertisers, especially those just starting out on their TikTok journey.

Online fashion retailer Dolls Kill used post-purchase surveys with measurement partner Fairing to measure an increase in revenue and responses while testing a full-funnel media strategy ahead of the Halloween sale season. The data revealed a 186% variance in CPA compared to last-click attribution, showcasing the importance of incorporating additional attribution models into their overarching media strategy.

2. Ways to refine and optimize your strategy

The most straightforward way to validate and scale the factors driving outcomes for your business is by using the split testing tool to test and learn from ad strategies that improve your return on ad spend (ROAS) on TikTok Ads Manager. In our guide to split testing, we've laid out a simple framework and some specific tests that can help you to hone in on winning strategies.

If you have found success with using conversion lift studies, you may also consider using multi-cell conversion lift studies in place of split testing to execute your test-and-learn plans. This allows you to test different media strategies to evaluate which is more effective at influencing incremental conversions.

Leading money management app Plum used a conversion lift study to gain powerful insights into their campaigns across the UK, discovering a 127% incremental lift, with 55% of conversions being incremental.

3. Tools to grow your business effectively

When you're looking to identify new campaign opportunities from the conversion journey on TikTok, the Attribution Analytics tool within TikTok Ads Manager is a great starting point. It can help you measure the results of your ad campaigns and gain deeper insight into consumer behavior on TikTok. The Performance Comparison feature visualizes conversions across different time windows to help you find an attribution strategy that works for your business.

To take your analysis a step further, you can use a Conversion Lift Study to test incremental conversions. We recommend cross-referencing these findings against multi-touch attribution results or your internal attribution solution to identify the incremental levers that are most impactful in growing your ad performance.

Holistic measurement to unlock growth

As the consumer purchase journey evolves, it's critical that marketers are able to measure their efforts in a way that captures the nuances of this new landscape. To help businesses navigate these changes, TikTok is dedicated to providing a holistic suite of measurement tools and solutions that give a clearer view into marketing success, enabling them to invest more efficiently and unlock growth on the platform.

To learn more about our measurement solutions, download the guide below.

Sources

1. Fospha, "Last Click Continues to Undervalue Paid Social in 2024, and Fospha Reveals a ‘Halo Effect’ for TikTok", 2024

2. TransUnion Marketing Attribution (Modeled Dates: Q4 2023); Measures 10 Retail advertisers