Product sales

Best practices for Video Shopping Ads with TikTok Shop

Last updated: September 2024

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

  1. 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.

  2. Or in Ads Manager, link a TikTok Account with Showcase permission authorized. For the steps, refer to How to get Showcase permission.

  3. Or 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.

Use these best practices to help maximize your TikTok Shop sales using Video 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.

  • TikTok Shop Product Selection

    • Prioritize advertising top-selling TikTok Shop SKUs to boost sales.

    • Include new products or non-best sellers to test market potential and bring higher exposure to these products.

    • Try advertising a mix of products at different price levels:

      • Low-priced items may have lower CPA, but also lower ROAS.

      • High-priced items may have lower CVR, but higher ROAS.

    • If you're using a multi-products format, ensure that the selected products are cohesive (for example, products are part of the same product range, products are complementary, etc.).

  • Ad group structuring

    • Avoid having similar ad groups (for example, same targeting, same product, same creative, etc.). This may lead to sub-optimal campaign performance since ad groups compete with each other for the same objectives.

      • Instead, try creating different ad groups based on different audience targeting and different types of products.

      • Example: A shoe seller can create one ad group for men's sneakers, one ad group for men's boat shoes, one ad group for women's office shoes, etc.

  • Audience Targeting

    • Select your core target audience for TikTok Shop Video Shopping Ads with automated 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 enhanced audience targeting expansion.

  • Creative

    • We recommend having 3-5 ad creatives minimally per ad group.

    • Make sure that the creative is relevant to the TikTok Shop product(s) being advertised.

      • If using the multi-product format for Video Shopping Ads, ensure the creative is relevant to the product range advertised.

    • Add a new creative into the ad group ideally once a week or when noticing creative fatigue (for example, decreasing CTR or engagement with the ad).

    • Create urgency by emphasizing TikTok Shop limited-time promotions.

  • Budget and schedule

    • Use a daily budget and run ads for at least 7 days.

    • If using TikTok Shop Video Shopping Ads for the first time for the advertised product, make sure that you have a sufficient budget to start (for example, try having at least 50x of your target CPA for the ad group).

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

    • Begin running ads at least two weeks before your mega sale day:

      • Gradually scale up your ad budget e.g. by 30% per day leading up to the sale day.

      • Consider running Live Shopping Ads in parallel to highlight upcoming promotions and encourage audiences to save the date.

  • Bidding Strategy

    • Set Highest Gross Revenue or Lowest Cost Bidding to automatically maximize sales at the set budget level.

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

      • Set CPA at 20-30% higher than your intended CPA if cold starting ads for a smarter performance ramp-up.

  • Optimization Objective

    • Try optimizing the ad content for Gross revenue or Purchases.

    • Test using a mix of ROAS optimization (Gross Revenue) and CPA optimization (Purchase) for different use cases.


Features

  • Advanced Targeting: Our system capabilities will automatically optimize ad delivery within the selected target audience, including broad audience selection.

    • Available Demographics: Location, Gender, Age Group, and Language

      • Geo-targeting is limited to the TikTok Shop's selling location.

      • Optional: Within the country, you can further specify more granular geo-targeting (for example, province/state).

      • Note: We recommend limiting age targeting to above 18 years of age to achieve the best conversion results (as users under 18 years of age will not be able to purchase).

    • Optional: Interests, video interactions behavior, creator interactions behavior, hashtag interactions behavior, custom audience, a lookalike audience, device.

    • Optional: Shop Activity Audience is now fully launched. Note: We recommend that you ensure the target audience size is Fairly Broad or Balanced.


  • Full-Funnel Optimization Goals: Product Sales Objective now supports a range of full-funnel optimization goals for your video ad. Note: Product Sales Objective now supports a range of full-funnel optimization goals for your video ad.

    • Gross Revenue Optimization to optimize for higher Gross Revenue and Return on Ad Spend (ROAS)

    • Purchases to optimize for more orders

    • Initiate Checkout to optimize the ads for people who are most likely to check out an item

    • Click to optimize for upper-funnel discovery

    • Note: Compared to Purchase optimization, Gross Revenue Optimization for TikTok Shop optimizes for higher Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) in addition to identifying people who are more likely to take a purchase action. For more information, refer to Gross Revenue Optimization for TikTok Shop.

  • TikTok Account Flexibility: You can leverage one or more TikTok Accounts via separate Ads under the same Ad Group. The TikTok Account will be featured in the ad. You can choose to use a TikTok Account owned by you, or get authorization to use other TikTok Accounts.

  • Creative Formats: Product Anchor Link is the default call-to-action due to historically strong conversions and click-through rates. You can select from 1-20 products for the ad. The product information and destination are synced automatically from your TikTok Shop. You can use a video from the TikTok Account, or upload a video, for the ad.