Best practices for LIVE Shopping Ads
Last updated, November 2023

LIVE Shopping Ads is already available to all TikTok Shops. There are two ways you can connect TikTok Shop to Ad Account for advertising purposes:

  1. In Seller Center, connect one or multiple Ad Accounts for advertising purposes. For steps, refer to How to Set Up Shop Ads in Seller Center.

  2. In the Business Center, request access to one or multiple TikTok Shops for advertising purposes. For steps, refer to Requesting TikTok Shop Access from Business Center.

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, make sure that you have a sufficient budget to start. In general, it takes about 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.

    • It's not recommended to change the budget midway through a short livestream (less than 2h), 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.

  • It's highly encouraged to have an estimated audience size (indicated by the meter on the top right) that's minimally Fairly Broad 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.

  • Your livestream should ideally be at least 2 hours. Shorter LIVE sessions may result in under-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

  • We recommend optimizing for Gross revenue / Purchases to maximize ROAS.

  • We recommend optimizing Viewer Retention to maximize livestream traffic.


To get started

  1. Connect your TikTok Shop to your Ad Account. To learn about setting up TikTok Shop Ads in Seller Center, refer to How to set up TikTok Shop Ads in Seller Center.

  2. Create LIVE Shopping Ads.


FAQs

Do I need to create a separate catalog?

No, you do not need to create a separate catalog. You just need to connect your TikTok Shop to your Ad Account. Learn more here.


Do I need to set up pixel tracking?

No, you do not need to set up pixel tracking.

Content