TikTok for Business offers tools that allow businesses to share the events on their website with TikTok. TikTok Events API is designed to give our advertisers a more reliable connection between TikTok and advertiser marketing data (servers, website, app, or CRM) while also providing the flexibility for advertisers to customize the information they share with TikTok. Sharing these events with TikTok helps marketing teams measure ad performance on TikTok, optimize ad delivery, and create target audiences.
As part of our best practices, we recommend having an Events API integration that compliments your existing Pixel integration. Please note that Pixel or Events API set-up is a pre-requisite for our Web Conversions objective in TikTok Ads Manager. We recommend leveraging both solutions together to adapt to the changing ads ecosystem and maximize performance benefits.
Learn more about how to get started with the Events API.
Benefits of Events API
Events API provides businesses the opportunity to have a sustainable campaign set-up and adapt to the changing ads ecosystem, by allowing unobstructed marketing data sharing between your business and TikTok to reach your marketing objectives. Benefits of implementing TikTok’s Events API include:
Improve ad delivery and targeting by capturing missing conversions
Conversions reported via Pixel may be impacted due to connectivity issues and inconsistencies in how various browsers operate. When implemented with the Events API, more conversions will be reported and leveraged to better inform measurement, optimization, and targeting.
Granular control over the data your business shares with TikTok
Your Events API integration will give you more control to only share the data required to meet your marketing objectives enabled by TikTok’s optimization products.
Enables resilient solutions as advertising ecosystems evolves
TikTok Events API builds a dependable connection between the advertiser's business and the TikTok platform, ensuring a more sustainable transition in response to changes in the advertising industry. By incorporating the Events API with an existing Pixel, advertisers are better positioned for changes in the industry while keeping their current campaign strategies and set-up in place.
Compare Web Conversion Setup Methods
There are three ways to set up Web Conversion with TikTok, by utilizing Pixel, Events API, or both. Please see below the benefits of these setup scenarios:
| Events API | Pixel | Pixel + Events API (RECOMMENDED) |
Benefits | - Enables more sustainable event sharing between your business and TikTok. - Improves ad delivery and targeting by capturing missed conversions. - More control over what data your business shares with TikTok. | - Lightweight implementation. - Easy customer event capture and reporting. - Automatic updates to pixel performance included. | - Events API enriches conversions shared by Pixel. - Enriched conversions enhances full-funnel measurement, ad delivery, and audience creation. - Enables sustainable transition to ad industry changes. |
Time to Implement | - Direct API implementation can take between 1-4 weeks. - Commerce & Data Partner integrationswill vary by partner. Can be less than 1-hour. | - Manual Pixel code implementation often takes a few minutes. - Integration with 3rd party Pixel partners may vary. Often can be less than a few minutes. | -Similar to the Events API implementation, with additional time to set up event deduplication. |
Resources Needed | - For Direct API: Advertisers may need to resource in-house developers, martech teams, ad operations or others with technical expertise. - For Commerce & Data partners: Additional support may be provided by partners and will vary by partner. | - In-house developers, martech teams, ad opertations, or others with website coding expertise. - For Commerce & Data partners: Additional support may be provided by partners and will vary by partner. | - For Direct API: Advertisers may need to resource in-house developers, martech teams, ad operations or others with technical expertise. - For Commerce & Data partners: Additional support may be provided by partners and will vary by partner. |
Event Deduplication is required for advertisers using both Pixel and Events API. Advertisers should share duplicate events through Events API and Pixel for deduplication. Learn more about how Event Deduplication works.
How to Integrate with Events API
There are a few integration methods you should consider when thinking about integrating with Events API:
Commerce Partner Integration: For advertisers partnering with one of TikTok’s Commerce partners, setting up Events API takes only a few minutes in TikTok’s Events Manager. Learn more about Commerce partners integrated with Events API.
Data Partner Integration: For advertisers partnering with one of TikTok’s Data partners, such as Customer Data Platforms (CDPs), Tag Managers, CRMs, and other marketing technology partners, setting up Events API is done via the partner platform. Learn more about Data partners integrated with Events API.
Direct Integration: For advertisers who prefer the utmost control over their data, setting up the Events API is achieved by dedicating in-house developers to follow our Marketing API documentation. Learn more about integrating with Events API directly by following our best practices.
Note: Sharing events via server-to-server APIs is becoming commonplace across publishers. If you have previously gone through the process of integrating server-to-server APIs with other publishers, you may be able to utilize the same integration method to share Event data with TikTok’s Events API.
Sharing Events with Events API
Prior to integrating with the Events API, we recommend predefining which Events you are interested in sharing with TikTok to achieve your marketing objectives. Standard events are predefined actions website visitors can take that are supported across TikTok Ads. This includes 14 standardized events and custom events which can be used to report and measure actions taken on your website.
When setting up the Events API with the TikTok Pixel side by side, it is recommended to mirror your Pixel setup. This means sharing identical events through both channels, and the required data to allow deduplication between both channels.
For additional information on choosing events, please visit our section on Standard Events and Parameters.
Sharing Matching Data with Events API
It is highly recommended to include multiple types of matching data to increase the accuracy of targeting and optimization models.
Match Data | Description | Additional information |
Click ID | -Click ID is a unique identifier that is appended to the click URL every time a person clicks on an ad on TikTok. Once the website is loaded, you can store the Click ID and share it back to TikTok every time the person triggers an event. -Each Click ID is unique and adheres to the same CTA window as configured in Attribution Manager (see Attribution Manager). | Details you can share with your developer team on Click ID are available in this article Set up TikTok Click ID and Cookies. |
Cookies | -If you're using the TikTok Pixel and have enabled the use of first-party cookies in your Pixel settings in TikTok Events Manager (see Using Cookies with TikTok Pixel), TikTok will automatically save a unique identifier in the ttp first-party cookie. The value of this cookie is used to enhance the matching of website visitor events with TikTok ads. | Details on how to share first-party cookie values with Events API are available Report Web Events and Parameters. |
Advanced Matching | -Advanced Matching is a feature that enables you to share privacy-safe customer emails and phone numbers, as well as IP addresses and browser user agents, to be matched with people on TikTok. -We recommend sharing External IDs that represent any unique identifier on the advertiser's side, such as loyalty membership IDs, user IDs, and external cookie IDs. | Details on Advanced Matching, including Frequently Asked Questions around hashing and security are available Advanced Matching. |
Matching Best Practices
To increase the probability of matching website visitor events with TikTok users, and improve your ad attribution and ad delivery optimization, we recommend sharing as many match keys and identifiers as possible from the following list:
Click ID
First-party cookie
Advanced Matching:
Email (hashing required)
Phone (hashing required)
External ID (hashing required)
IP address and user agent
Privacy and Data Usage
Learn more about how this information is used by reading TikTok Business Products (Data) Terms.
Learn more about how TikTok honors users' in-app and device-level privacy settings by accessing our Safety Center.