Best practices for Auction Ads

Last updated: July 2024

When you create auction ads on TikTok, the auction will determine the best ads to show to people over a period of time. Your ad's auction performance can depend on your bidding strategy, ad creative, audience settings and ad account structure. You can use these best practices to improve your auction ad performance and increase the value of your ad spend.


Best practices for Auction Ads

  • Share signals from your app or website with TikTok. When you share events from your app or set up a Pixel for your website, you can see detailed information about the actions people took after they saw your ad. If you have a website, we recommend using both the API integrations and Pixel at the same time. Learn more about measurement.

  • Create ads from one TikTok Ad Account. Information about your ads, including conversions and performance metrics, aren't shared between ad accounts. We recommend 3-5 active ad groups per ad account, and 3-5 ad versions per ad group. Learn more about ad account structure.

  • Start with a broad audience. A broad audience can help you learn who is most likely to engage with your ads, and improve the value of your ad spend. Learn more about audiences.

  • Follow our creative guidelines and best practices. When you create videos and ads that people like, they are more likely to take the actions you want. Learn more about creative best practices.

  • Set a high bidding strategy that fits your goals. For example, if you want to increase conversions for an ad group set for Cost Cap, you can try to increase your CPA bidding. If your ads and ad groups are new, consider starting with Maximum Delivery or Highest Value bid strategies. Learn more about bidding and budget solutions for auction ads.

  • Use metrics to refine your bidding strategy. Watch metrics like CPA and ROAS to adjust your bidding strategy over time, but be careful not to adjust your bidding too often. Let your ads go through the learning phase and give your campaigns time to learn how people engage with your ads.

  • Keep your campaign budget open and use a daily budget for ad groups. You can set up Campaign Budget Optimization to help optimize budget allocation between ad groups.

  • Choose a budget that you can maintain over time. Think about how much you want to invest in TikTok Ads and choose a budget that fits your goals. A higher daily budget might help your ads win auctions at first, but it might not be sustainable over time. Learn more about budget best practices. You can also use Automated Rules to automatically increase your budget when the right conditions are met.

  • Pace your ad spend and delivery evenly. Choose standard delivery with a daily budget to use your budget evenly over the course of your ad campaign. Give the auction time to find the best times, placements and audience settings for your ads. If you want to spend your budget as fast as possible during a short time, you can choose Accelerated delivery. For example, you can use accelerated delivery with your daily budget to use your entire budget during a promotional period or to support a launch at a specific time of day.