How to create engagement audiences

Last updated: February 2025

Engagement audiences allow you to create audiences based off of users' engagement with:

  • Organic TikTok videos

  • Ad content

  • Ad solutions (Instange Page ads, App Profile Page ads)

  • TikTok LIVE content

The engagement audience captures the audience who have taken action on TikTok Ads Manager's family of apps, including TikTok, Resso, Helo, and other apps.You can use specific user actions such as video view time, engagement, or video view completion to create a customized audience for use in a campaign. Engagement audiences can be used to retarget past engagers to promote products or services, or to optimize ad spend by excluding recent content engagement. You could also create a lookalike of this custom audience to create prospecting campaigns to grow your business.

Note: It can take 24-48 hours for an engagement custom audience to generate.

Before you begin

Before you create engagement audiences, especially with LIVE or organic content, your TikTok user account must be linked to your TikTok Ads Manager (TTAM) account. You can link your accounts in one of two ways;

  • User settings in TikTok Ads Manager: Specify the TikTok user account(s) that you would like to connect under the settings section of your TikTok Ads Manager Account.

  • Through Business Center: Link your TikTok account(a) with the organic or LIVE videos to a Business Center. The ad account where you would like to create the audience must be linked to the same Business Center that allows for asset ownership verification and permissions. This is required as consent for using videos and live streams is provided as part of Business Center authentication.

There are additional parameters and considerations for creating engagement audiences:

  • A minimum audience size of 1,000 is required to target Custom Audiences in an ad group.

  • Pangle placement supports audiences generated from clicks and impressions only. Other actions such as video views are not supported.

  • One advertiser can have up to 400 custom audiences at one time within the account.


How to create engagement audiences

To create an engagement audience:

  1. Go to Assets and choose the Audience section.

  2. Click on Create Audience, choose Custom Audience, and select Engagement.

  3. Select Ad Groups or Videos.

    1. For Ad Groups:

      • Select one or multiple Ad Groups (leaving the Ad group ID blank defaults to the account level).

      • Select Ad Type.

    2. For Videos:

      • Select Video type: Public Video (organic content tied to the account) or LIVE Video.

      • Select the TikTok account where your content is located. You can only select one account at a time.

      • Select Video(s) that you would like to use. You can select up to 50 videos.

  4. Select the action and time period:

Ad Type

Action

Lookback Window

Public (organic) videos (video_id/item_id)

- 2s video views- 6s video views- Video View at 100%- Engagement (like, share, comment)

7 days, 14 days, 30 days To request additional lookback window for your account,

please fill out this form

LIVE videos (room_id)

- Views- Engagement (like, share, comment)

7 days, 14 days, 30 days To request additional lookback window for your account,

please fill out this form

Video Ads

- Click- Impression- 2-Second Video View- 6-Second Video View- Video View at 25%- Video View at 50%- Video View at 75%- Video View at 100%

7 days, 14 days, 30 days, 60 days, 90 days, 180 days

TikTok App Profile Page

- View- Click


TikTok Instant Page

- View- Click


  1. Click the Add more rules icon and choose between Broaden Audience or Narrow Audience.

    1. Broaden Audience allows you to create an audience with one engagement type or another engagement type.

    2. Narrow Audience allows you to create an audience with one engagement type and another engagement type.

  2. Click Exclude People and enter engagement, time period, and Ad Group ID if you want to exclude certain users from being added to your Engagement list. You can skip this step if you want to include everyone.

  3. Name your audience.

  4. Toggle Auto-Refresh/Reach and Frequency. Note: The default status of the auto-refresh toggle is enabled for custom audiences with this option. Learn more about custom audience auto-refresh.

  5. Click Confirm to create your audience.