TikTok Ads Manager Glossary & Terms
Here is a list of the most relevant advertising terms that you need to know to create and run ads on TikTok Ads Manager.
Term | Definition |
Accelerated Delivery | Accelerated Delivery is an ad delivery type where the system will help you spend your budget and get your targeting results as quickly as possible and maximize the effectiveness of reaching your audience. Accelerated Delivery is an ad delivery type where the system will help you spend your budget and get your targeting results as quickly as possible and maximize the effectiveness of reaching your audience. For more information, refer to Delivery Type. |
Ad | An Ad is the content that you will ultimately present to your target audience. Ads generally contain the following elements: media (image/video), ad text or caption, display name, call to action button, and interactive add-on experience. On TikTok Ads Manager, ads belong to an ad group. For more information, refer to Set up an Ad. |
Ad Format | Ad format determines how your ads will be presented to your audience. On TikTok Ads Manager, ad format includes, but is not limited to, horizontal, vertical, or square videos, and images. |
Ad Group | An ad group is built up underneath a campaign and contains a set of similar ads. You can define your placements, ad details, target audience, budget, schedule, bidding method, and delivery type at the ad group level. These selections will determine where your ads appear, who sees them, how the system optimizes ad delivery, and how you control your ad spend. For more information, refer to Set up an Ad Group. |
Ad Placement | Ad Placement is the apps or ad networks where your ads will appear. TikTok Ads Manager supports Automatic and Select Placement. With Automatic Placement, the system will optimize ad delivery across all available placements. With Select Placement, you will get to select the placement of where you want your ads to appear. For more information, refer to Automatic Placement and Select Placement. |
Ad Specifications | These are the system's design and technical requirements for an ad's creative elements. Including, but not limited to, file type, file size, resolution, aspect ratio, and character count. |
Advertising Objective | An advertising objective is what you want people to do when they see your ads. To choose the right objective for your campaign, consider your business goals and what user actions you want people to perform when they see your ads. For more information, refer to How to Choose the Right Objective. |
App Event | Users' behaviors that happen within a related app, like app downloads or logins. For more information, refer to In-App Events. |
App Installs (Advertising Objective) | App Installs is an advertising objective on TikTok Ad Manager that optimizes ad delivery against getting people to install your app. For more information, refer to What's the App Installs Objective. |
Auction Ad | Ads created with the Auction Buying Type will enter our ad auction. In the ad auction, our system will use the ad's bid, quality, and context for the users' view to evaluate the ads. Next, the system will compare all of the available auction ads and determine which ads to show. If the system finds that your ad is likely to be a successful ad, it will be delivered. If the system finds that your auction ads are not competitive, they will not be shown. |
Audience Insight | Audience Insight analyzes ad performance using your audience's characteristics, like gender, age, location, demographics, etc. |
Automated Creative Optimization | Automated Creative Optimization is an ad group feature that automatically helps find the high-performing combinations of your creative assets. For more information, refer to Automated Creative Optimization. |
Awareness | On TikTok Ads Manager, awareness is a category of advertising objective that helps people become familiar with your brand or product. Creating awareness is a key step in promoting a new product or brand. Ideally, awareness of the brand may include the qualities that distinguish the product from its competition. For more information, refer to How to Choose the Right Objective. |
Bid Cap | Bid Cap is a Bid Strategy that places a maximum amount that the system can spend to achieve a specific result, like impressions. When you use this method, you will enter the maximum cost per result you are willing to bid, and the system will optimize delivery against it. For more information, refer to Bidding Strategies. |
Block List | Block List is a feature on TikTok Ads Manager that lets you exclude specific media placements on Pangle. For more information, refer to Block List. |
Brand Safety | Brand safety is a set of measures that aim to protect the image and reputation of brands from the damaging influence of questionable or inappropriate content. |
Broad Targeting | Broad Targeting means only using your ad group's required targeting settings to define the audience for your ads. With this Broad Targeting, our intelligent system will determine the best audience for your ads. For more information, refer to Audience Size Estimate Overview. |
Call to Action | A line of copy that urges someone to take action. On TikTok Ads Manager, most ads include a call to action button that will drive traffic to a landing or app download page. For more information, refer to "Create an Ad". |
Campaign | A campaign is a specifically designed strategy to achieve desired results. On TikTok Ads Manager, a campaign is made up of a series of ad groups, each with its own unique targeting settings, optimization goals, budgets, and ads. For more information, refer to Set up a Campaign. |
Catalog Sales (Advertising Objective) | Catalog Sales is an advertising objective on TikTok Ads Manager. You can use the Catalog Sales objective to create Dynamic Showcase Ads to deliver personalized product ads to the most relevant users. For more information, refer to What's the Catalog Sales Objective. |
Collection Ads | Collection Ads are a type of in-feed video ad on TikTok that leads your customers to an Instant Gallery Page, where they can browse for your products - without ever leaving the app. For more information, refer to "Collection Ads". |
Community Interaction (Advertising Objective) | Community Interaction is an advertising objective that will optimize ad delivery against getting more engagements with your TikTok account. You can choose to optimize ad delivery for follows or profile visits. For more information, refer to What's the Community Interaction Objective. |
Consideration | On TikTok Ads Manager, Consideration is a category of advertising objective that optimizes ad delivery against actions that help people find more information about your brand or product, like visiting your website or going to your app download page. For more information, refer to How to Choose the Right Objective. |
Conversion (Advertising Objective Type) | On TikTok Ads Manager, Conversion is a type of advertising objective that optimizes ad delivery against people taking actions on your website or app, like purchasing a product. For more information, refer to How to Choose the Right Objective. |
Conversion (Advertising Term) | In advertising, a conversion is when someone completes an action that you've defined as valuable to your business, like purchasing a product, signing up for a newsletter, or downloading an app. |
Conversions (Advertising Objective) | Conversions is an advertising objective that drives valuable actions on your website or app. For more information, refer to What's the Conversions Objective. |
Cost Cap | Cost Cap is a Bid Strategy that will give the system an average cost per result that it tries to achieve - this means that the cost per result sometimes will fluctuate higher or lower than the bid amount. For more information, refer to Bidding Strategies. |
CPC | Cost per Click. TikTok Ads Manager uses CPC for bidding and reporting. For more information, refer to Bidding Methods. |
CPF | Cost per Follower. TikTok Ads Manager uses CPF for optimization & reporting. For more information, refer to Metrics. |
CPM | Cost per Mille/Thousand Impressions. TikTok Ads Manager uses CPM for bidding and reporting. For more information, refer to Bidding Methods. |
CPV | Cost per Thousand Views. TikTok Ads Manager uses CPV bidding and reporting. When setting up your ad groups, you can optimize ad delivery against 2-second or 6-second video views. For more information, refer to Bidding Methods. |
Creative | On TikTok Ads Manager, creative refers to the elements used to create an ad. Including the media (images/video), ad text, display name, call to action, and interactive add-on. For more information, refer to Create an Ad. |
Creative Center | Creative Center is an official creative portal from TikTok that showcases high-performing ads and trends. For more information, refer to Creative Center. |
Custom Audience | Custom Audiences is an ad group targeting option that lets you find people who have already engaged with your ads or business. For more information, refer to About Custom Audiences. |
Delivery Estimation | Estimated ad delivery data. |
Flight | Flighting is an advertising scheduling strategy that alternates between running a regular advertising schedule and a complete cessation of all runs. Flighting refers to the period when you are running ads. |
Frequency | The average number of times each unique user account saw your ad. |
Frequency Capping | Frequency Capping is a feature that lets you increase the limit on the maximum number of times your ad was exposed to a unique user account within a set period. |
Global App Bundle | Part of TikTok's apps, including Resso. For more information, refer to Global App Bundle Placement. |
Identity | Identity is a feature on TikTok Ads Manager used to identify the TikTok account publishing an ad. You can use this feature to control the profile image, display name, and creative you can use when posting an ad. For more information, refer to About identity. |
In-Feed Video Ads | In-Feed Video Ads are video ads displayed in the TikTok For You Feed, Following Feed, Profile Feed and the content feed of other placements. For more information, refer to TikTok Auction In-feed. |
Instant Form | An Instant Form is part of a Lead Generation ad that allows your customers to share their contact information, learn about your business, answer your questions, and schedule an appointment. For more information, refer to Build an Instant Form. |
Instant Page | An Instant Page is a type of interactive add-on used to create Collection Ads. For more information, refer to How to Create Collection Ads. |
Lead Generation (Advertising Objective) | Lead Generation is an advertising objective that allows your prospective customers to share their contact information with you either directly on TikTok via Instant Form or on your own website. For more information, refer to What's the Lead Generation Objective. |
Learning Phase | Learning Phase is part of the ad delivery process, where our system seeks to find the best audience for your ads. For more information, refer to Learning Phase. |
Lookalike Audience | A Lookalike Audience helps you find audience groups that share commonalities with your existing customers. The model will study the attributes of the source Custom Audience to create a Lookalike Audience. For more information, refer to About Lookalike Audience. |
Maximum Delivery | Maximum Delivery is a Bid Strategy that does not require a bid. Instead, it will use the available ad group budget to generate as many results as possible at the Maximum Delivery per result. This way, Maximum Delivery can always spend the budget, no matter how competitive the auction environment is. For more information, refer to Bidding Strategies. |
Measurement | In advertising, measurement is the process of evaluating the performance of your advertising. In addition to monitoring core ad performance metrics like impressions, reach, and clicks, measurement includes tracking the actions that occurred on your website or app after someone saw your ad. |
Narrow Targeting | Narrow Targeting means using your ad group's targeting settings to define the audience for your ads. For more information, refer to Audience Size Estimate Overview. |
oCPM | Optimized Cost per Mille/Thousand Impressions. TikTok Ads Manager uses oCPM for bidding and reporting. Compared to CPM, oCPM targets users who are the most likely to complete a conversion, like submitting a lead or installing an app. For more information, refer to Bidding Methods. |
Pangle | Pangle is the leading video advertising platform offering interactive and high-performance in-app advertising solutions. Pangle empowers advertisers to reach extended audiences and scale their user base and business through a vast network of mobile apps powered by intelligent advertising technology. For more information, refer to Pangle Placement. |
Pixel | A TikTok pixel is an HTML code snippet that gets loaded whenever a user visits a website, when a user gets to your site, the pixel fires and will track the user's behavior and conversions. For more information, refer to About TikTok Pixel. |
Placement | An ad group setting that determines the apps where your ads are delivered. For more information, refer to Automatic Placement and Select Placement. |
Playable Ad | Playable Ads are interactive videos that allow you to showcase your app before someone downloads it. When someone watches your video, they are invited to experience your app by tapping or swiping on your ad in a full-screen playable experience. Only Pangle placement supports Playable Ads. For more information, refer to Playable Ads (Pangle). |
Playback Events Tracking | Track the audience's behavior at specific time spots (usually 2s, 6s) of the video display. It helps measure people's interest in your video and ad content. |
Product Catalog | A catalog is a feature on TikTok Ads Manager that allows you to manage key information about your products, including descriptions, images, product videos, links, sizes, availability, and more. TikTok Ads Manager will use the information in your catalogs to create Dynamic Showcase Ads. For more information, refer to About Catalogs. |
Reach & Frequency | Reach & Frequency is an ad buying type on TikTok Ads Manager that lets you purchase ad inventory at a set cost with predictable results. For more information, refer to About the Reach & Frequency Ad Buying Type. |
Reach (Advertising Objective) | Reach is an advertising objective on TikTok Ads Manager that will optimize ad delivery against showing your ad to the maximum amount of unique user accounts. For more information, refer to What's the Reach Objective. |
Reach (Advertising Metric) | The number of unique user accounts who saw your ads at least once. This metric is estimated. |
Resso | Resso is a social music streaming app that enriches the way people experience music together. |
Smart Video | Smart Video is a creative tool on TikTok Ads Manager that uses our intelligent software to create video ads using your images and videos. For more information, refer to Smart Video. |
Smart Video Soundtrack | Smart Video Soundtrack is a creative tool on TikTok Ads Manager that instantly adds background music to your videos - with the help of AI. For more information, refer to Smart Video Soundtrack. |
Spark Ads | Spark Ads is a native ad format that lets you create ads using organic TikTok posts. You can publish Spark Ads using your own TikTok account's posts or organic posts made by other creators - with their authorization. For more information, refer to Spark Ads. |
Split Test | Split Test is a tool on TikTok Ads Manager that lets you test ad groups against each other to understand which strategies and ad settings give you the best results. For more information, refer to About Split Testing. |
Standard Delivery | Standard Delivery is an ad delivery type where the system will distribute your budget and ad evenly based on the traffic during the selected advertising period. If the traffic is heavy, your ads will be sent more. For more information, refer to Delivery Type. |
Targeting | Targeting is the process of defining the audience you want to see your ads. On TikTok Ads Manager, Targeting is set up at the ad group level and includes Audiences, Demographics, Interests & Behaviors, and Device. For more information, refer to Ad Targeting. |
TikTok Video Editor | TikTok Video Editor is a web-based video editor on TikTok Ads Manager that lets you create TikTok-style videos. For more information, refer to TikTok Video Editor. |
Traffic (Advertising Objective) | Traffic is an advertising objective that will optimize ad delivery against sending people your website or app download page. For more information, refer to What's the Traffic Objective. |
Video Template | Video Template is a creative tool on TikTok Ads Manager that lets you create video ads by adding your images and videos to a pre-made video template. For more information, refer to Video Template. |
Video Views (Advertising Objective) | Video Views is an advertising objective that will optimize ad delivery against getting the most people to watch your videos or content. You can choose to optimize ad delivery for 2-second or 6-second views. For more information, refer to What's the Video Views Objective. |