How to create manual and automated campaigns in the upgraded Smart+ experience

Last updated: October 2025

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Manual and Smart+ experiences have been unified into a single flow, offering a more flexible ad buying experience where you can fine-tune your campaigns with new levels of control. With the upgraded experience, you can tailor your campaign to full automation, partial automation, or fully manual. This article covers how to create both fully automated and manual campaigns in the upgraded experience.


Tip: If you'd like to create and edit multiple Smart+ campaigns, ad groups, or ads in TikTok Ads Manager using an Excel/CSV file, you can now use the Bulk Import & Export tool. Learn more about Bulk Import & Export for Smart+ Campaigns.

How to create a manual campaign in the upgraded Smart+ experience

Tip: You can download the complete setup guide below:

Manual campaign setup guide .pdf (4.7 MB)

Step 1: Create a new campaign.

  1. Log in to TikTok Ads Manager.

  2. Click Create ad.

  3. Select your campaign objective. Note: The upgraded Smart+ experience is available for the Sales, Lead Generation, and App Promotion objectives.

Step 2: Choose your campaign level settings

  1. For supported ad objectives, you can choose to use a catalog by turning on the Use catalog toggle.

  2. Choose your budget strategy.

    1. For manual campaigns, choose the Ad group budget option, which lets you choose different budget and bidding settings for each ad group.

Step 3: Edit your ad group level settings

  1. Enter your optimization and bidding settings as needed, including any additional settings.

    1. For manual campaigns, you can have different optimization goals, events, and bidding strategies across ad groups.

  2. Edit budget and schedule settings.

    1. Enter the budget as needed for each ad group. Both daily and lifetime budget options are available.

    2. Adjust the schedule settings for your ad group as needed.

  3. Set up audience targeting.

    1. For manual campaigns, click Switch to custom targeting at the bottom of the Audience targeting module to access the full range of manual targeting options.

  4. Set up placement and brand safety.

    1. For manual campaigns, choose the Select placement option. You can choose the specific placements you'd like to include.

Step 4: Choose your ad level settings

  1. Enter the destination URL or Instant Page where you want to direct users.

    1. Build URL parameters as needed. Learn more about adding URL parameters in TikTok Ads Manager.

  2. Set up your creative assets.

    1. Add creative assets from your TikTok posts or creative library. If you include a destination URL, a Recommended tab will appear in the Add creative window, suggesting assets based on your website content and recent performance data.

    2. If you'd like to specify a single creative and text pair, add only one creative asset and one text copy to each asset group ("ad").

    3. Note: Ads will be generated based on combinations of your videos and ad texts, and the high-performing combinations will be automatically delivered.

  3. Add more asset groups as needed.

    1. You can add multiple asset groups within an ad group. This allows you to include multiple destination URLs and product sets in your campaign. It also lets you define different creative asset and text copy combinations across asset groups.

After you've completed setting up your asset groups, click Publish all to finish creating your campaign.

How to create a fully automated campaign in the upgraded Smart+ experience

Tip: You can download the complete setup guide below:

Smart+ upgraded experience setup .pdf (4.88 MB)

Step 1: Create a new campaign.

  1. Log in to TikTok Ads Manager.

  2. Click Create ad.

  3. Select your campaign objective. Note: The upgraded Smart+ experience is available for the Sales, Lead Generation, and App Promotion objectives.

Step 2: Choose your campaign level settings

  1. For supported ad objectives, you can choose to use a catalog by turning on the Use catalog toggle.

  2. Choose your budget strategy.

    1. To automatically optimize your budget allocation across ad groups, keep the Campaign budget option selected. Enter your campaign budget as needed and choose between daily or lifetime budget. Note: When you set a budget at the campaign level, you must have the same optimization location, goal, event, and target CPA across all ad groups.

Step 3: Edit your ad group level settings

  1. Enter your optimization and bidding settings as needed, including any additional settings.

    1. For fully automated campaigns, the optimization goal, event, and budget settings must be identical across all ad groups.

  2. Edit budget and schedule settings.

    1. For fully automated campaigns, you can optionally add a spend target per ad group. We'll aim to spend at least this amount, but it is not guaranteed.

    2. Adjust the schedule settings for your ad group as needed.

  3. Set up audience targeting.

    1. By default, TikTok will use automatic targeting to identify and optimize toward the best-performing audience with minimal input from you. You can adjust Audience controls to set baseline parameters for who you want to reach. You can also set up Audience suggestions, where you can choose additional audience settings to help guide automatic targeting.

  4. Set up placement and brand safety.

    1. Automatic placement is set by default. Depending on your region, automatic placement may include ad placements on non-TikTok partner surfaces, through the TikTok Pangle network. You can additionally choose brand safety options.

Step 4: Choose your ad level settings

  1. Enter the destination URL or Instant Page where you want to direct users.

    1. Build URL parameters as needed. Learn more about adding URL parameters in TikTok Ads Manager.

  2. Set up your creative assets.

    1. Add creative assets from your TikTok posts or creative library. If you include a destination URL, a Recommended tab will appear in the Add creative window, suggesting assets based on your website content and recent performance data.

    2. If you'd like to specify a single creative and text pair, add only one creative asset and one text copy to each asset group ("ad").

    3. Note: Ads will be generated based on combinations of your videos and ad texts, and the high-performing combinations will be automatically delivered.

  3. Add more asset groups as needed.

    1. You can add multiple asset groups within an ad group. This allows you to include multiple destination URLs and product sets in your campaign. It also lets you define different creative asset and text copy combinations across asset groups.

After you've completed setting up your asset groups, click Publish all to finish creating your campaign.