Investing in a high-quality product catalog can have a significant impact on advertising performance results. A well designed catalog with optimal configurations, accurate and complete product information enhances audience experience and maximizes targeting potential. This helps build credibility and makes it easier for audiences to make informed purchase decisions, which ultimately results in overall increased engagement and advertising performance.
Here are some expert tips for creating and maintaining a top-notch product catalog to boost your advertising game.
Ensure correct permissions
In order to make changes to a catalog such as adding items or creating product sets, you need to have Catalog Management role in your Catalog. Learn more about appropriate permission levels here.
If you are managed by an agency or partner, we recommend sharing your Catalog access with your agency or partner Business Center account. This avoids you from the possibility of losing permissions to your Catalog in the event of changing agency or partner.
Please note that only users with Admin Role of your Business Center can assign user roles to Catalogs and share Catalog permission with partner Business Center accounts.
Business Center users can only share a catalog with a Business Center owned by their partner(s) and not with a third Business Center.
Keep in mind that permissions are assigned to each user, and up to 100 users can be assigned to a catalog.
To use Catalog for ad creation in Ads Manager, the ad account and catalog need to be linked to the same Business Center. Users need access to both via Business Center.
Optimize match rate
Event match rate represents the percent of signals events shared that can be matched to the SKU ID in your catalog using the Content ID attribute. When the system is not able to make an exact match between Content ID and SKU ID, it will look to the other Catalog attributes to inform ad content. You will want to optimize your event match rates towards 100% for optimal ad delivery targeting higher intent users that maximizes performance results.
Upload all products into a single catalog instead of creating multiple catalogs. This consolidates all SKU ID parameters within a single catalog that allows all your products to be matched with your user events, achieving optimal match rates. It also enables you to easily view and manage your inventory in one place, allowing for more efficient changes to your product information. For businesses with a vast product range, we recommend dividing them into multiple feeds with a maximum of 50 million products per feed to ensure that your catalog stays updated smoothly and timely.
Install App / Pixel event and verify Content ID - Setting up your App or Pixel allows you automatically capture user events to measure, target and optimize your campaigns by matching website or app events with the content and ads people view on TikTok.
To match user events to the product catalog, it is essential to ensure that the Content ID parameter passed through is present and matches the catalog format.
Connect user events with Catalog to enable our systems to match the products in your Catalog with your user event source. If you are integrating your catalogs and pixels through Shopify, this process will be done automatically.
When users perform events on your website, your pixel automatically captures these events. In order to achieve optimal performance results, a connection between Catalog and Pixel is critical to display relevant items from your catalog to users who have higher intent.
Use high-quality images and videos
Use high-quality images or videos that are at least 500x500 pixels to improve your product visibility and enhance audience experience. If the minimum image specifications are not followed, the product will be disapproved upon review.
All images must be in JPEG or PNG format. Images uploaded using an image link must be complete, valid and end with .jpeg or .png extension in its URL. For example, https://www.tiktok.com/t_shirt_image_001.jpg
Showcase your product prominently by using a white background and by avoiding blurred images, placeholders, distracting logos, watermarks, or images with too many background elements. This will increase the likelihood of your products being displayed and promote call to action.
Resolve product issues or disapprovals
Having minimal product issues or disapprovals allows for a wider selection of items to be delivered and showcased to audiences, maximizing the potential of your catalog. Learn how to spot and resolve common product issues below with diagnostics dashboard.
Comply with all applicable laws, rules and regulations that apply to the targeted advertising regions as each product is reviewed against our policies to ensure the safety of our audiences. This can be done by avoiding prohibited, restricted products or services and abiding to market-specific ad policies.
In the event of false disapproval, you may submit an appeal request at a limit of 50 products per month by opening Catalog Manager, go to Products, select products you wish to appeal, and then click Appeal. If your products exceed the limit of 50 products, please reach out to your sales representative for support.
Avoid spelling mistakes, exaggerated claims or unrecognizable symbols such as ®, ™, © that may result in product disapproval. Craft precise and distinct product titles and descriptions that highlight vital information to create a lasting impression. Additionally, the Title attribute should not exceed 150 characters while the Description attribute should not exceed 20,000 characters.
Ensure your server or hosting site has necessary permissions that allow Tiktok to fetch product information smoothly and timely without any restrictions. This can be done by whitelisting TikTok's IP address or by reaching out to your dedicated salesperson should the problem persist.
Provide accurate and consistent product data
Refresh your catalog on a daily basis to provide optimal audience experience by keeping your product information consistent and up to date in both your catalog and website from any changes in prices or availability.
Ensure product titles and descriptions are consistent with the information provided on your landing page for optimal delivery and audience experience.
Ensure product links are valid and accurate to optimize audience experience and enable effective tracking and analysis of advertising performance. We regularly review the accuracy of your product data with the information provided on your landing page through web-scraping technology to ensure its consistency and quality. However, sometimes we may encounter issues when scraping your webpage, preventing us from properly reviewing your product. The most common reasons for these issues include the following:
The landing page cannot be opened or found as a result of incorrect spelling or non-functional website (HTTP Error Code 404).
The server's robots.txt protocol does not support scraping.
Please ensure your product links are accurate by making sure they start with either http:// or https:// , your website is properly functioning, and has the necessary permissions and robots.txt configurations for scraping. By doing so, you can help ensure that your products are reviewed in a timely manner and prevent them from being disapproved.
Provide optional attributes
Provide optional attributes such as Brand Name, Age, Gender, Color, Size, Google Product Category, and any other pertinent details about your products can help to enhance your products visibility. The more comprehensive and accurate your optional attributes are, the better the chance of providing your audiences with the most suitable recommendations. Classifying your products into 2 to 3 levels of Google Product Category will aid customers in finding your products through search and filters, enhancing overall recommendations and ad performance results. For example, Apparel & Accessories will have sub-category of Clothing, then will have a category for Dresses.
Placing key information at the start of your product title and descriptions will help to capture audience attention, even if the full name is not visible in certain ad formats. This is a powerful way to give customers a good idea of what your product is all about before they even click on it.
Categorize product variations
Variants are different versions of the same item, such as a dress that comes in different colors and sizes. Attributes like size, color, material, and pattern can be assigned to variants, making it easier for customers to find what they're looking for. Setting up variants in your catalog can benefit you by allowing audiences to see other variants on your product page, and displaying a wider selection of items since only one variant of each item will be delivered in your ads.
If you offer multiple variants of the same product, ensure that you add an "item_group_id" attribute and assign the same ID to all products of the variants. However, each product within a variant must still have its own sku_id attribute.
Group product sets by use case
Create product sets to group products according to their use case such as category, themes or specific hero items to promote them in a more targeted and relevant manner.
Shopping Ads is recommended for the following use cases:
Brand Promotion: If you have a large catalog and want to promote your brand without specifying products
Category Promotion: If you have a few hot or seasonal products, or if you want to promote a specific category
Hero SKUs: If you only have 1-3 products, such as new product launches, small medium businesses, or promotions for hot products.
Achieve optimal product review resources
To help us review your catalog's products in a timely way, TikTok Catalog uses an optimization system called Enhanced Catalog Review (ECR) that evaluates your product availability to determine how it prioritizes products for review.
ECR allows for more products to become Available for ad delivery at a quicker speed. This enables you to publish your advertising campaign immediately after uploading your products into your Catalog, without losing momentum.
If a notification prompt appears on your TikTok Catalog Manager, this means that ECR has been disabled on your catalog. Resolve Unavailable products with issues in your catalog with diagnostic dashboard to enable ECR and experience optimal product review.