About Automated Keywords for Search Ads campaigns

最終更新：2026 年 3 月

Automated Keywords for Search Ads Campaign is an expansion tool that helps you explore broader, high-quality search traffic. This feature automatically generates keywords based on your ad creatives, including videos, images, text, and product information. It complements your manually entered keywords by discovering new opportunities and targeting high-intent search queries that you might have missed.


By default, the automated keywords setting is turned off for Key Accounts (KA) and turned on for small-to-medium businesses (SMBs). KA holders have to opt in or turn the toggle on to leverage automated keywords. SMB account holders have to opt out or turn the toggle off to not use automated keywords.

Availability and eligibility

  • Platform: TikTok Ads Manager

  • Eligible Ad Formats: Search Ads with video, carousel image, and catalog formats.

  • Supported Objectives:

    • Traffic

    • Lead Generation

    • Sales (Web Conversion and Catalog) Note: Availability for the Catalog objective may vary by region.

  • Market: This feature is available in the US and in all markets where Search Ads campaigns are available. It's also available for all markets where Search Ads campaign is opened for allowlist.


Benefits

  • Increase scale: Capture additional traffic and gain incremental conversions with a relatively stable Cost Per Action (CPA). Internal testing has shown that this feature can drive 10% incremental conversions while meeting CPA targets.

  • Improve efficiency: Reduce the manual effort required to build extensive keyword lists and simplify the campaign setup process.

  • Discover optimization opportunities: Review the performance of automated keywords in your search term reports. You can then add high-performing terms to your manual keyword list to further optimize your campaigns. This feature has also been shown to reduce the time spent in the learning phase and improve the learning phase pass rate by 12%.


How it works

When you enable automated keywords, the system analyzes both your ad creatives (for example, videos, images, text, and product information) and the keywords you’ve added to your ad group’s keywords module to generate relevant keyword ideas. These keywords are then used to match your ads with user search queries on TikTok, expanding your reach beyond the terms you’ve manually selected.

Automated Keywords Module with toggle_V1_3-03-2026

Campaign setup and management

Automated keywords are designed to work alongside your manual keywords, not replace them. The Automated Keywords feature requires at least one keyword to be added for the system to trigger the keyword expansion.


You aren't notified when new automated keywords are added to a campaign. We suggest regularly reviewing your search term reports to monitor performance.

Reporting and performance

The performance of your automated keywords is displayed in your campaign reporting. You will see an aggregated line item for all automated keywords. A dropdown menu is also available, showing the top 10 highest-spending automated keywords.


In some cases, the system may automatically match your ad to a user's query based on general relevance without using a specific keyword. When this occurs, the search term may be reported as "unknown" because no explicit keyword triggered the ad.


Additionally, once your ad creatives are set, the Search Volume Estimator will include the potential volume from automated keywords in its results to give you a more comprehensive forecast.