How to work with advertising on TikTok

Publication date: 14 Oct 2019

TikTok is a social network for creating and sharing short video and messaging. In Russia, TikTok has audience of 8 million people who watch 10 billion videos a month and spend 39 minutes a day on the application. In 2018, the application was downloaded over 660 million times around the world making it the most popular application on App Store and the fourth most popular on Google Play.

Demand for advertising on TikTok is on the rise. TikTok’s dynamic format has its own peculiarities: cheap clicks are easy to get, but it takes much more effort to keep your ad performance at a high level.

A promising ad platform

TikTok is a new, popular platform which is not overheated so far. Competition on TikTok is weak, its user base is growing quickly, but the social network is still lacking content. As a result, organic reach on TikTok is much wider than on other social networks which are overloaded with information.

Among available pricing models on TikTok are performance-based CPI and CPA and brandformance-based CPC and CPM. TikTok is an advertising channel where advertisers can reach a wide audience and get a relatively low cost per click or cost per thousand impressions. The audience can be targeted by age, location, and interests.

How to work with advertising on TikTok?

Follow these rules for successful advertising on TikTok.

• If the target audience of your product is people aged 13-25 and your product is of a low cost or designed specifically for youth, you have the best chance of success.
• Change your creatives regularly. TikTok users scroll through dozens of videos daily and quickly get bored with same-type content. Always try to create something new to attract and hold their attention. 
• Keep an eye on the content of your creatives. Background music, dynamic storytelling, a little bit of suspense are what users love about vloggers, and they want to get the same from you. Make tests with creatives, consider results, optimize your content—basic analytics is a must.
• Brevity is the soul of wit. Even a 15-second ad is too long for TikTok. The 5-second ad format is the best option—users can’t skip such ads and have to watch them to the end.
• Keep users engaged. People like pushing on buttons to see what will happen. Offer them this opportunity. When users interact with your ads, they are more likely to get interested in your product.