Best practices for Smart+ Lead Generation Campaigns

Last updated: July 2025

The following best practices can help you get the most out of your Smart+ Lead Generation Campaigns:

Optimize campaign performance

  • Allow learning phase completion: During the first 7 days of campaign delivery, any edits to the bid, audience, or creative may impact the learning phase. We advise letting campaigns run for 7 days without any significant edits to the bid, audience, or creative.

  • Daily budget strategy: We recommend that you set a daily budget of at least 10 times the average daily CPA to support the learning phase. This approach helps gather enough leads for optimization and avoids CPA fluctuations.

  • Cost Cap bidding: Use the Cost Cap bidding strategy by inputting a target CPA during campaign setup. This should be based on historical data from the last 7 days.

  • Dayparting for Lead Generation ads: If you have specific operating hours for call centers or stores, use Dayparting under Advanced settings to help ensure ads are shown at the right times, preventing pauses or manual restarts during off-hours.


Increase targeting efficiency

  • Broad targeting: We recommend broad targeting to reach a wider audience for Smart+ Lead Generation Campaigns. However, if broad targeting results in lower lead quality, consider narrowing the audience with more options available.

  • Targeting options: Use advanced targeting features to narrow down your audience:

    • Set a minimum age (18 or 25) in Advanced settings.

    • You can exclude specific custom or lookalike audiences to focus on new potential leads.

  • Try audience suggestions: This feature helps you identify and prioritize your target audience. Audience suggestion is available by allowlist only and not available to all advertisers.


Optimize Lead Ad destination

  • Test your landing page for Website Lead Generation: Ensure your landing page loads quickly across all devices, especially mobile. A slow page can impact conversion rates.

  • Consider TikTok Instant Forms: Consider launching a Smart+ Lead Generation campaign using TikTok Instant Forms.


Handle campaign fatigue

  • Evaluate data trends: Review the performance over several days before reacting to CPA spikes. Early changes within the learning phase (first 7 days) are not recommended.

  • Stabilize CPA post-learning: After the learning phase, monitor CPA over three days. If fluctuations continue, try testing new creatives or adjusting the budget. We suggest increasing the budget by no more than 50% per day to prevent performance issues.

  • Creative rotation to avoid fatigue: We recommend adding 2-5 new creatives without deleting existing ones to keep the budget ratio balanced. Avoid excessive creative additions (no more than 10) at once to prevent budget strain.