Social Media

How To Use TikTok Ads: Start Your First Campaign

Feb 4, 2025 | By Chris Jacks

TikTok has become one of the premier social media platforms for influencer marketing. The connection between audiences and creators helps to drive ecommerce sales and many DTC brands on TikTok.

One way to increase your brand’s reach on the platform is to use TikTok Ads in conjunction with your influencer marketing strategy. This synergistically boosts your reach and when done properly, you can maintain your ROI for great scaling opportunities.

Understanding TikTok Ads can be a little tricky though, especially if you’re new to the platform or its paid ad system. 

In this guide, we’ll take you from zero to hero and explain everything you need to know to run a successful paid TikTok ad campaign solo or in conjunction with an influencer marketing strategy.

What Are TikTok Ads in 2025?

TikTok Ads officially launched its personalized ad platform in 2020. This makes it a relative newcomer to the paid social media advertising space. TikTok ads place advertisements in a user’s feed. The ads are designed to work seamlessly as the user scrolls through their usual content feed. 

There are a few other options for TikTok ads, such as branded hashtag options which provide a great amount of flexibility depending on your marketing goals. You can also turn your standard organic content into a paid ad by promoting it through TikTok paid ads.

TikTok Ads work by allowing you to choose different demographic targeting options along with different campaign goals. This customization allows for a good level of targeting so you can maximize your ROI as you scale. 

Detailed analytics also allows you to track your TikTok ad performance so you can make quick adjustments on the fly. Analytics within TikTok ads are all real-time or near real-time, so you can minimize losses while performing tests.

TikTok ads use a bidding system, similar to other paid ad platforms like Google Ads. This means you want to keep a close eye on performance to make sure you optimize your campaigns regularly due to changing price structures.

What Type of Brands Should Use TikTok Ads?

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There’s really no limit to what type of brands can use TikTok Ads, although it works best for brands targeting Gen Z and Gen Alpha customers. Due to the younger demographics present on the platform, brands selling to this consumer group will have greater success.

It’s also best for brands who can wrap their marketing message into short video ads that match TikTok’s popular format used by creators. This requires a little creativity and you want to avoid using repurposed marketing content for TikTok.

The more you customize your ads for the platform, the better they will perform. However, you don’t want to try to fit a square peg into a round hole. If your brand and messaging don’t work with the casual and creative style of TikTok, it might not be the best fit.


But even with that, many corporate brands have found great success on the platform by using creative ways to showcase their products and services while still fitting in with other TikTok videos in a user’s feed.

If you’re a smaller brand, TikTok Ads can also be appropriate. It has very low minimums for spending and daily budgets, usually around $50 which makes it competitive even on smaller budgets.

For comparison, Google Ads has no daily minimums and Facebook Ads only has a $1 minimum. So while TikTok ads are higher, it’s still within reach of most small businesses or those on small marketing budgets.

The Different TikTok Ad Options You Can Choose

Although it’s only 5 years old, TikTok ads offer a good mix of advertising options that align well with the platform’s content. 

Below, we’ll cover the different options you can choose.

In-Feed Ads: These are sound-on, vertical video ads that appear within users’ For You Page (FYP) feed, blending in with organic content from creators the user follows. Brands can expand these ads with interactive add-ons to boost engagement. Overall, these are the most common types of ads and they require replicating the style of the platform to have the best results.

TopView Ads: This format focuses on visibility by displaying your ad as the first piece of content when users open the TikTok app. TopView ads start with a three-second zoom-in, followed by a transition to an in-feed video experience. The goal is to capture users’ attention right from the start. These begin with a 3-second takeover of the app to display the hook of your ad, which should be strong. These high-impact ads are only available upon request for brands seeking to use them. Contact TikTok or your ad representative to ask about enabling this feature for your account.

Branded Mission: This advertising solution allows brands to crowdsource authentic content from TikTok creators. By encouraging creators to participate, brands can boost top-performing videos as ads, which drives impressions and fosters genuine engagement. To use these ads, you start by putting out a Branded Mission request for content. You can then manage the UGC as creators upload videos and choose which ones you want for promotion.

Spark Ads: A native ad format that enables brands to leverage organic TikTok posts for advertising purposes. This format lets you create ads on TikTok Ads Manager using existing organic posts, combining the authenticity of user-generated content with the reach of paid advertising.

Promote: This feature allows brands to amplify their organic content, including videos, photo posts, and LIVEs, directly within TikTok. With just a few taps, you can drive traffic and reach a wider audience by promoting your existing content.

Carousel Ads: Available in formats such as Standard Carousel, these ads allow brands to display multiple images within a single ad unit. They are suitable for campaign objectives like Traffic, Web conversion, Lead generation, and App promotion. Carousel Ads provide a versatile way to showcase various products or features that may not work with other ad options.

How To Get Started With TikTok Ads

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TikTok Ads is designed to be accessible for brands as well as agencies, so getting signed started is relatively easy. 

Step One: Create Your Account

You’ll first need an account that’s separate from your TikTok user account. Go to the TikTok Ads signup page first and follow the instructions to instantly create your account.

You’ll need to confirm your basic information like an email address or phone number. Once you do that, your account will be created and you can move on to the next steps. TikTok will ask you a few questions about your business, although you can change any of these answers or settings at any time once you get started.

Part of the setup will include TikTok Pixel, which is a piece of code that you can place on your website to share website visitor events with TikTok via a browser.

What Is TikTok Pixel Used For?

  • Audience Building: Create custom audiences based on website visitor events, like page views or purchases, to model lookalike audiences.
  • Ad Optimization: Measure the performance of your TikTok ads and optimize them for better results.
  • Performance Measurement: Measure campaign performance by allowing you to learn what strategies work best based on a series of events you define.

Overall, Pixel is an integral part of TikTok ads and it provides you with features and measurement tools to ensure you get the most out of the platform.

Installation is relatively simple and most brands can do it themselves using the instructions below. In some cases, you may need to hire a web developer if you’re unsure how to access and make technical changes to your brand’s website.

Steps to Install the TikTok Pixel:

Create Your TikTok Pixel:

  • Log in to TikTok Ads Manager and navigate to the Events Manager under the “Assets” section.
  • Click on “Connect Data Source,” select “Web,” and proceed with the setup.
  • Name your pixel, preferably corresponding to your website or campaign.

Install the Pixel Code on Your Website:

You have two choices: either a manual installation if you’re hosting your website on your own servers. Partner integration is used for platforms such as Shopify.

  • Manual Installation: Copy the pixel code provided and paste it into the header section of your website’s HTML code.
  • Partner Integration: If you’re using platforms like Shopify or Google Tag Manager, you can integrate the pixel through their systems without manual code adjustments.

Configure Events:

  • Define the actions (events) you want to track, such as “Add to Cart” or “Purchase.”
  • Set up these events using TikTok’s Event Builder tool or through custom code, depending on your technical resources. Custom events will generally require the assistance of a web developer.

Verify Your Pixel Setup:

  • You can use the TikTok Pixel Helper, a Chrome extension, to ensure the pixel is tracking correctly on your website.
  • Test your pixel events within the Events Manager to confirm accurate tracking.

Step Two: Creating A TikTok Ads Campaign

Once you have Pixel set up properly on your website, you can create your first campaign on TikTok Ads. If you’ve created campaigns on Facebook or with Google Ads, you’ll be familiar with this process and it mostly works the same as other platforms.

To begin, go to the Campaigns tab in your ad manager and click on Create. There, you’ll name your campaign and choose whether or not you want to use the Basic or Advanced features during setup.

Basic Campaign Setup: In TikTok Ads, this option takes you through the essential steps to create a campaign. It focuses on the key aspects of a campaign, including.

  • Advertising goal
  • Audience
  • Budget

Advanced Campaign Setup

The Advanced option gives you more control over your campaign but does require knowledge of the platform and your specific goals. This includes things like split tests and category selections that are not present in the Basic setup options.

The Advanced setup also allows you to choose automated optimization. This works by having you set up at least two campaigns under the same group and then allowing the TikTok Ad system to determine which is performing better.

Step Three: Creating Ad Groups In TikTok Ads

When choosing ad groups, you first need to decide if you’re sending traffic to a website or an app. Most brands will likely be sending traffic to an ecommerce site. But for app developers, you can use TikTok to drive traffic to your app for download or purchase, which is a nice option.

Choose Where Your Ads Are Displayed

Like many ad platforms, TikTok also has ad partners where your advertisements can show up. In this part of the process, you choose where you want your ads to be displayed across TikTok and the partner networks.

You can select these manually or you can allow TikTok to choose for you. Generally, it’s best to choose these manually. After doing some research, you want to ensure your ad campaign aligns with those partners and that the ad will resonate.

If you allow TikTok to choose, it will generally just place your ad anywhere it can. While this can work, it oftentimes brings down the ROI since it’s more of a shotgun approach, which is never good for digital marketing.

If your goal is brand awareness, then allowing TikTok to choose where your ad shows up can work better since you’re going for reach. But if you’re going for conversions, ecommerce sales, or app sales, you want to ensure your ad is displaying where the message resonates with users.

This can also be an issue if you’re on a small budget. Being displayed across different partner sites and apps can quickly burn through your budget while not delivering the best returns.

Overall, make sure to take some time to research the partner sites and other display options during this process to maintain your ROI and maximize your budget.

Step Four: Choosing Your Target Audience On TikTok

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TikTok makes it relatively easy to choose your target audience during campaign setup. Each option has its own menu that you can then further select targeting options.

Top-level options on TikTok include:

  • Demographics
  • Audience
  • Interests & Behaviors
  • Device

When you choose each of these top-level options, you will be presented with sub-options. If you pick demographics, you can then pick if you are targeting a specific gender, age group, and so on.

Do this with each of the top-level options until you have all of the options chosen for your selected campaign. If you’re doing split testing or plan on targeting different groups, you will want to create an entirely new campaign for that purpose.

Just make sure to name them in a way that you can quickly tell the difference at a glance. When running ads, you can quickly build out a list of ad campaigns, and managing them all can become difficult if you use names such as “Campaign1”. Try to be as descriptive as possible.

Step Five: Setting Budget & Schedule

When starting out, you usually want to set a lower budget as you optimize your ads through feedback and metrics. Once you have some data, you can begin to scale your TikTok ads by increasing the budget to expand the reach.

There is a minimum of $50 for the budget, so you can start here if you have no experience with the ad platform. Those with more experience in digital marketing and paid ads can set a higher budget that’s appropriate for their tests and campaign goals.

You can also set your scheduling which can be important. If you already post content on TikTok, you should have an idea of the best times to post based on the early views and engagement the content receives.

Use this as a baseline for scheduling when your ads appear. You can set them to appear 24/7, but those looking to optimize their ads to the fullest may want to try different times that align with their posting schedule.

However, there’s no set rule here, and doing split testing along with analytics is the only way to know for sure. If you’re just starting out, don’t worry too much about scheduling as you’ll need more data to make a real determination.

Step Six: TikTok Ads Bidding and Optimization Options

In this section, you select what your goal is for the ad in relation to a CTA or other action. For example, you can optimize for clicks and users ending up on your landing page with the TikTok Pixel tracking.

The TikTok algorithm will choose who to display the ad to based on your preferences. While the specifics of the algorithm are not disclosed, they use past behavior to determine which uses are most likely to follow the action you are optimizing for.

Overall, the targeting on TikTok is acceptable, although not as good as on some platforms such as Meta. However, the Meta platform is also much older and has years of data to work off of. The TikTok algorithm is improving all the time and this targeting also seems to be improving.

Creating Your TikTok Ad (Creatives)

With the technical details out of the way, this is where you supply your creative that will get displayed in the areas you’ve chosen. You’ll generally want to have this ready to go before you start setting up the rest of your campaign. 

However, you can pause the ad setup process here if you need to design and create your ads before moving forward. You can use these tips to optimize your video for influence marketing.

Understanding TikTok Smart Creative Ads

TikTok’s Smart Creative is an advanced automated tool designed to streamline ad creation and enhance performance by combating creative fatigue. It achieves this through a combination of automated creative generation, fatigue detection, and auto-refresh strategies.

You can think of this feature as an automated “remix” that takes all of your ads and creatives and mixes them to get fresh output. The algorithm determines when certain creatives are dropping in popularity or engagement, and then cycles in a fresh version.

Key Features of Smart Creative:

  • Automated Creative Generation: Smart Creative automatically creates variations within an ad group by combining text, video, and other creative elements in innovative ways, increasing the diversity of your ad assets.
  • Fatigue Detection: The tool continuously monitors ad performance to identify early signs of creative fatigue, ensuring timely interventions to maintain audience engagement.
  • Auto-Refresh: Upon detecting creative fatigue, Smart Creative automatically rotates different creative assets in and out of your ad auctions. This approach helps prevent inefficient ad spending and sustains campaign effectiveness over time.

Brands can have mixed results using this feature so it’s a good idea to keep a close eye on your campaign metrics if you enable Smart Creatives. However, for brands that want an automated approach, it can be a time-saving feature and likely won’t harm your performance too much assuming the rest of your campaigns are set up well.

For those who want the most optimization possible, you’re better off selecting your different creatives after careful analytics and research.

Previewing Your TikTok Ad

This is an important step and it allows you to view your ad exactly as a regular TikTok user will see it. This is your final chance to make any changes or modifications to ensure your ad blends seamlessly on the platform and has the best chance of success.

Measuring Results From Your TikTok Ads Campaign

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With your ad created and going live on TikTok, you now have to keep track of how it performs to make sure you’re getting a good return on your ad spend.

When analyzing TikTok Ads performance, advertisers should focus on the following key metrics:

  • Impressions: The number of times an ad is displayed.
  • Clicks: The number of times users interact with the ad.
  • Click-Through Rate (CTR): The percentage of users who clicked on the ad after seeing it.
  • Engagement Rate: Measures interactions such as likes, shares, and comments.
  • Conversion Rate: The percentage of users who completed a desired action (e.g., signing up, making a purchase).
  • Cost-Per-Click (CPC): The cost incurred for each click on the ad.
  • Return on Ad Spend (ROAS): The revenue generated from ad spend.

Using TikTok Ads Manager for Performance Tracking

TikTok Ads Manager is the primary tool for tracking and measuring ad performance. Here’s how to use it effectively:

  • Access the Dashboard
    • Log in to TikTok Ads Manager.
    • Navigate to the Campaign tab, where you’ll find an overview of active and past campaigns.
  • Analyze Campaign Performance
    • Select a specific campaign to view its analytics.
    • Review key metrics such as impressions, engagement, and conversions.
    • Use date filters to analyze trends over different time periods.
  • Review Audience Insights
    • Navigate to the Audience section.
    • Examine demographic data such as age, gender, and location.
    • Identify high-performing audience segments for better targeting or allocations of ad spend.
  • Monitor Conversion Tracking
    • Use TikTok Pixel or third-party tracking tools to measure website conversions.
    • Navigate to the Events Manager tab to view tracked conversions and optimize for better performance.

Leveraging TikTok’s Analytics Tools

In addition to TikTok Ads Manager, advertisers can use other built-in analytics tools to enhance their campaign insights:

1. TikTok Business Center

  • Provides a centralized platform for managing multiple ad accounts and team collaboration.
  • Allows for cross-account performance tracking and deeper analytics.

2. TikTok Creator Marketplace (TCM) Insights

  • Ideal for brands collaborating with influencers on TikTok.
  • Provides detailed historical performance metrics for influencer-led ad campaigns.

3. Custom Reports

  • Create tailored reports by selecting specific KPIs and timeframes.
  • Export data for offline analysis or integration with third-party analytics tools or dashboards.

How To Optimize Your TikTok Ads Based on Analytics

Once performance data is collected, advertisers should use insights to refine their ad strategies using these techniques:

  • A/B Testing: Run multiple ad variations and compare performance metrics.
  • Creative Optimization: Adjust video length, captions, and visual elements based on engagement rates.
  • Audience Targeting Adjustments: Refine targeting settings to focus on high-performing demographics.
  • Budget Allocation: Shift budget to top-performing campaigns to improve ROAS.

Final Review Of TikTok Ads

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TikTok Ads has come a long way considering it was only released a few years ago. TikTok has managed to include many unique features that help brands automate their digital advertising while still maintaining an acceptable ROI.

Overall, the platform may lack some of the more advanced targeting features of Meta’s ad platform, but TikTok Ads is a strong competitor for brands that are already on TikTok and want to increase their reach or leverage organic UGC through paid ads.

Because of the low minimums, it’s also a very attractive entry point for newer brands who may not have experience managing their own campaigns. The easy step-by-step nature makes it relatively simple to set up a campaign that has a high chance of success

By contrast, Meta’s ad platform has powerful features, but it can often be overwhelming for new users and it’s common to set up a campaign with poor targeting that burns through your budget before turning a profit.

TikTok Ads can also work well alongside your current influencer marketing strategy. Deciding on paid ads vs influencer marketing is also important depending on your specific goals.If you’re looking for more exposure on TikTok and need some direction, contact our TikTok strategy experts at HireInfluence. We specialize in influencer marketing and paid advertising on TikTok.

Founded in 2011, we have the experience and knowledge to help brands leverage TikTok to the fullest.

Contact us today and let us help you reach your business goals in 2025!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Chris Jacks is an influencer marketing professional with over a decade of experience in the digital marketing sphere. As the Director of Growth Strategy, Chris oversees and drives strategic initiatives to fuel business expansion. With a keen eye for market trends and opportunities, Chris develops comprehensive growth plans and aligns business objectives across cross-functional teams. With a strong focus on crafting impactful, ROI-driven influencer campaigns across multiple sectors, Chris utilizes his expertise to enhance market positioning and maximize results.

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