Best practices for LIVE Shopping Ads

Last updated: August 2024

Use these best practices to help maximize your sales with LIVE Shopping Ads.

  • Use product sales objective: Go to TikTok Ads Manager and start a new Campaign. From the Campaign creation page, select Product Sales as the objective. Select TikTok Shop as the Product Source, then complete the campaign settings.

  • Ad group structuring: Use one livestream per ad group to better match the schedule between the ad group and the livestream.

  • Budget: If you're using LIVE Shopping Ads for the first time, ensure that you have a sufficient budget. It takes approximately 40 conversions per TikTok Shop to exit the learning phase. The budget may be shared across 1-2 campaigns.

    • It is recommended to take 40x the historical average CPA as the entire campaign budget in order to exit the learning phase

    • Avoid having less budget at the campaign level vs the total ad groups' budgets to prevent ad delivery instability.

    • Do not change the budget midway through a short livestream (less than two hours), which could cause ad delivery instability.

    • If you have multiple livestreams, use LIVE Shopping Ads for every livestream and gradually scale up the budget (for example, a 30% increase per day) leading up to mega sales day.

  • Content: Experiment with different LIVE hosts and monitor how well they each engage with your audience. A good LIVE host is key to driving good performance.

  • Audience targeting: Select your core target audience for LIVE Shopping Ads with broad targeting.

    • Understand the category of products sold and the nature of your followers to develop your audience strategy.

    • Ensure the age selected is 18+ for audience targeting.

    • Have an estimated audience size (indicated by the meter on the top right) that is broad enough for sufficient ad delivery.

  • Schedule: Make sure your LIVE Shopping Ad is scheduled to start and end at the same time as your livestream to support better ad delivery.

  • Bidding strategy: Use the Highest Gross Revenue or Lowest Cost bidding strategy to maximize sales at the set budget level.

    • If CPA is a concern, use the Cost Cap bidding strategy:

    • Set CPA at 20-30% higher than your intended CPA if cold starting ads.

  • Optimization goal: Optimize for Gross revenue/Purchases to maximize ROAS. Optimize for Viewer Retention to maximize livestream traffic.