TikTok has become an extremely popular platform with a huge user base. 24 million users downloaded the app in June 2024 alone. And powerful algorithms that allow for a deep understanding of the interests and behavior of the audience. This makes running ads on this platform extremely promising for businesses.

Advantages of TikTok

TikTok is becoming an increasingly attractive platform for advertisers in 2024, and for good reason. 

1. Maximum audience engagement. TikTok is designed to maximize audience engagement and entertainment. Advertising on TikTok has the potential to reach a large number of users and generate organic interest in the brand.
2. Positive user experience. Ads integrated into the FYP (For You Page) feed should be perceived more organically and not cause irritation to users.
3. Full-screen mode and sound. TikTok uses full-screen mode and sound. It makes ads more visible.
4. Co-creation and endless trends. TikTok encourages users to co-create and participate in trends. Ads that utilize these elements can go viral and expand brand reach.
5. Unique cultural impact. Advertising on TikTok can influence trends and shape the opinion of the audience.

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Advertising formats on TikTok

Next, we’ll take a closer look at Tiktok’s capabilities, formats, targets, etc.

TopView

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TopView is an advertising video that plays when the TikTok app openes, the most valuable and expensive placement option. And since users open the app more than once a day, your video will have a significant amount of impressions.

This format is purchased by buying 1 day of placement with a fixed price. Depending on the country and season, the price may vary, but the approximate budget per day is 5-6 thousand euros.

Top Feed

Top Feed is the display of ads in the best positions to attract the audience’s attention more effectively. When you open the app, you will see the fourth video being promoted on TopFeed.

This format is purchased on a reserve basis through the Reach & Frequency tool. 

Standard Feed 

Standard Feed is a typical ad in the Tiktok feed that uses an auction or reserve purchase model. But without being tied to the fourth video in the feed, it can be shown at any time. According to Statista, the average user uses the app for about an hour a day, enough time to watch about 240 15-second videos.

Prioritization

This photo clearly shows the priority of the video display. TopView is the most premium format, appearing as soon as you open the app for maximum visibility and reach. It is followed by regular TikTok videos, which are organically integrated into user-generated content. Top Feed ads are placed as the fourth video in the feed, ensuring high visibility. Then comes the Standard Feed, which is a regular placement in the main stream of content that balances reach and cost. This hierarchy allows advertisers to choose the optimal balance of reach, engagement and cost according to their marketing goals and budget.

Tiktok Branding tools

Branded Mission

Branded Mission is a new advertising product that connects brands with TikTok creators by incentivizing them to create authentic video content. As part of a Branded Mission campaign, TikTok creators will create videos according to the requirements you set. Branded Mission is a great way to develop authentic and creative promotional posts to drive engagement with your audience on TikTok.

Branded Effect

Branded Effect is a special type of AR (augmented reality) effect created by brands to promote their products or services on the platform. These effects allow you to interact with the TikTok audience in a creative and interactive way. They can include a variety of elements such as face masks, filters, backgrounds, or interactive brand-related elements. A well-made Branded Effect can go viral and encourage users to create content using it. These effects help build brand awareness. Branded Effects are often tied to challenges or campaigns that encourage users to participate. 

Advertisers can create effects themselves or provide materials for creation on the Tiktok site.

Interactive Modules

Next, I want to talk about additional features that are available when developing creative, namely interactive modules. These allow users to interact with the ad without going to the advertiser’s website. 

Story Selection

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Story Selection is an interactive module. This feature allows viewers to choose the next video to watch in InFeed ads. Using this module, the audience is presented with two interactive access points, each leading to a different version of the creative story, depending on the audience’s choice. For example, we show a generic video for 3 phone models, and here you can show 2 videos about individual phones.

Pop-out

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After the ad plays, a button appears with a call to action – a pop-out. Or a pop-up element appears in the center (e.g. a product) and then moves to the bottom left corner.

Gesture 

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Gesture is an interactive module that prompts the audience to click or swipe an ad to get more information. This is an additional engagement for the audience to interact with the ad. Tiktok also talks about rewarding such an action – for example, embedding a discount code in a gesture. And if the user interacts, they get that code.

Goals and Optimization

Focused view

Tiktok has many ad optimization options, but in my opinion the most important for brand awareness campaigns is the Focused View optimization, which pays for watching a video for at least 6 seconds. Considering the average video completion rate is 3-7%, this optimization option is the most appropriate and allows you to focus on the desired result by watching at least 6 seconds of the video.

Community Interaction

Tiktok positions Community Interaction as its most effective tool. Tiktok considers Community Interaction the most effective tool. It is intended to “promote” a Tiktok account or your own content here, without redirecting users to other platforms. Within the Community Interaction goal, there are two types of optimization: subscription optimization, which drives subscriber growth, and page visit optimization, which drives traffic to various TikTok landing pages:

• profile;
• hashtags
• playlists;
• music.

Smart Performance

Smart Performance Campaign is a new comprehensive campaign automation solution that maximizes results with less manual effort. 

Essentially, you choose a goal, set a budget, set dates, select a few creatives from your gallery, and launch. The system learns and will set goals, generate creatives, etc.

Tiktok says in its help: “Our system produces multiple creatives and bids for auctions leading to stronger performance for your campaigns when you select Smart Performance Campaign on the Campaign page of your TikTok Ads Manager.” 

This photo shows the benefits of using Smart Performance Campaigns (SPC) on TikTok. The key benefits that allow you to get better results from your ad campaigns according to Tiktok:

1. Efficiency: Helps reduce campaign creation time by 26%, allowing you to launch ads and get results faster.
2. Ad Lifetime: Increase ad life by 37%, which means more impressions and interactions with your target audience.
3. Cost optimization: 80% of campaigns deliver better cost-per-action (CPA), helping you spend your budget more efficiently.
4. Return on investment: 63% of campaigns deliver a higher ROAS (Return on Ad Spend), which means a higher return on your advertising investment.

TikTok Creative Solutions

TikTok has developed three new tools to support brands based on their needs, namely:

• Recut – to adapt existing creatives to the TikTok format;
• Remix – to create a remix of your creative;
• Reimagine – to rethink your creative.

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Recut

Recut is a tool for quickly adapting existing creative to the Tiktok format. It allows you to re-edit a regular creative to fit the vertical display and dynamic pace of the platform, as well as overlay sound from the service’s audio library. 

This is available through adaptive creatives or by contacting Tiktok directly.

Remix

The main feature of this improvement is that brands collaborate with authors who are known in their region. For example, in the photo you see an ad for the brand’s shoes, and on the right is one of the bloggers wearing the same shoes.

This feature will be free if you then spend N amount of dollars (data varies depending on the country) to promote this creative.

If you want to do a free remix (4 voice versions in different languages, etc.), Tiktok will do it for you if you spend at least $5000 later.

Reimagine

Here are 3 ways brands can push the boundaries of creativity with this tool:

1. Content from creators: Engage TikTok bloggers to bring your ideas to life.
2. Community engagement: Encourage TikTok users to join the dialogue by creating content with your brand (essentially using your filters, effects, etc.).
3. Native content: Plan, shoot and publish videos that look as organic as possible in FYP.

The cost of all this is customized to the brand and the request.

Conclusion

Let’s take a look at what is available as of summer 2024.

1. Video promotion in the user’s individual feed. Advertisers can buy a video right when the app is launched, an ad after the first three videos, and an ad in a random place in the feed after that.
2. Advertisers can set “tasks” for content creation directly to bloggers represented on the platform. Creators can create original videos on a given topic or fulfill a conditional PRD within Creative Solutions.
3. Rich Media-like interactive advertising is also now available on the platform. This includes the use of branded effects, as well as formats that require interaction during viewing. Users choose a product to watch an ad for or make certain gestures on the screen to receive a promotional code.
4. Tiktok has created its own Smart Campaigns, a “magic box” where advertisers put creatives, deadlines, goals, and budgets and receive a campaign optimized by Tiktok’s algorithms.

And this is only the part of the functionality that is most relevant to brand awareness advertising. There are separate solutions for lead generation, sales, and app promotion. The world’s attitude towards Tiktok is currently mixed, but whatever our ethical assessment of it, we must recognize that this platform is powerful and has already changed the video content market.