Scaling TikTok ads means increasing your campaign spend, reach, or creative volume while keeping CPA stable and ROAS above your profitability floor.
Not just raising a budget.
Done wrong, it resets the algorithm, spikes CPMs, and kills the margins that made the campaign worth scaling.
Done right, spend goes up, CPMs drop over time, and conversions compound.
Two ways to scale: vertically (more budget on what's working) or horizontally (more campaigns, audiences, creatives).
Let’s get right to it!
Vertical vs. Horizontal Scaling
Vertical scaling is increasing the budget on campaigns that are already working.
Horizontal scaling is duplicating those campaigns and pushing them into new audiences, creatives, or markets.
Most brands need both running at the same time to grow past a certain spend threshold.
What You Need to Scale TikTok Ads
More budget on a broken setup just spends faster.
Before touching anything, three things need to be checked.
Pixel + Events API
If TikTok can't see your conversions clearly, it can't optimize for them at scale.
TikTok recommends running both the Pixel and Events API together.
The Pixel tracks browser-side events. The Events API tracks server-side.
Together they fill the gaps that browser tracking alone misses, especially post-iOS 14.
If your pixel is firing but your Events API isn't set up, you're scaling on incomplete data.
Learning Phase
TikTok needs at least 50 conversions per week per ad group to exit the learning phase.
That number comes directly from TikTok's ads documentation.
Scale before hitting that threshold and the algorithm is still guessing who to show your ads to. The result is inconsistent delivery and a CPA that moves around too much to trust.
KPI Baselines
Set your floors and ceilings before scaling, not during.
Set a minimum ROAS you won't go below. Set a maximum CPA you won't go above.
Track CTR as a signal of creative health and CPM as a signal of audience saturation.
When a budget increase breaks one of those numbers, you need a hard threshold to react to, not a gut feeling.
Vertical Scaling
When a campaign is past the learning phase and CPA is holding, that's when you increase the budget. Not before.
The 20-30% Increment Rule
Raise the daily budget by 20-30% every 2-3 days.
Bigger jumps push the algorithm into a relearning cycle, which usually shows up as a CPM spike and a few days of wasted spend.
Smaller, steadier increases let it adjust without losing what it already learned.
Do this at the campaign level using CBO, not at individual ad group level.
CBO shifts budget automatically toward whichever ad group is converting, so you're not manually managing allocations across multiple groups.
TikTok's own guidance recommends this approach when scaling auction ads.
When to Scale vs. When to Wait
Horizontal Scaling
Horizontal scaling means expanding what already works. Instead of adding more budget to one campaign, you duplicate it and test new audiences, creatives, or ad groups.
Use it when CPMs rise, frequency gets too high, or budget increases stop improving performance.
- Lookalike Audiences: Build lookalikes from buyers first, not broad website traffic. TikTok gets a better signal when the source is closer to a purchase. If you do not have enough purchase data, use add-to-cart or checkout events.
- Audience Overlap: Audience overlap happens when duplicated campaigns target the same people. This can push up CPMs because your campaigns compete against each other. Use exclusions to separate prospecting, retargeting, and buyer audiences.
Are TikTok Ads Worth It?
TikTok ads are worth it for sure as they help present brands and their products to a large audience.
According to Statista, there are over 1 billion active users on TikTok worldwide.
That means there’s a very good chance that your ad will be seen by several people depending on who you’re targeting.
Oh and we’re not even done!
Here are some more reasons why you should invest in TikTok ads:
- TikTok supports different ad formats: Brands can run ad campaigns with different ad types including in-feed, brand takeover, top-view, branded hashtag challenge, and branded effects.
All of the various formats have different placements and a way of capturing your user’s attention and, possibly, increasing conversion rates.
- TikTok ads are more likely to reach engaged users: Running ads on TikTok means you will be marketing to users who are actively engaged on the platform.
There’s content for just about every user and as such, they’re usually engaged on the app.
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In 2020, statistics showed that the average US visitor spent 858 minutes per month on TikTok.
So when you launch a campaign, you can be certain that the video ad will reach people who are active on the app and will view the ad.
- Reach millennials and Gen Zs: Did you know that it’s predicted that millennials will make up 75% of the workforce by 2029?
Millennials and Gen Zs reportedly have two of the highest purchasing powers compared to other age groups.
As such, marketing to them means it’ll likely lead to conversion.
News flash—TikTok has captured their attention.
They make up 86% of TikTok users worldwide.
If you can capture these generations, you can be certain that your small business will experience long-term success.
So, are TikTok ads worth it?
Yes!
Don’t just take our word for it.
Here’s an example:
When popular telecommunications brand, Motorola, wanted to launch a TikTok profile in Italy, they had three objectives in mind:
- Reach a broader audience
- Market their Edge 30 smartphone
- Drive awareness
They created a campaign using TikTok’s Top Feed and In-feed ads.
The result?
The campaign saw Motorola garner 100k followers in under four months—a feat never achieved by Italian advertisers in the past.
The ad also achieved a 9.35% view-through rate and a 3.6% engagement rate.
There are more examples of popular brands including e-commerce businesses that have had outstanding results from using TikTok ads, but we’ll stop here for now.
We've still got a lot to discuss.
Let’s continue!
What Does Scaling an Ad Mean?
Scaling an ad means improving the results you get from your ad campaigns.
To do this, you need to make adjustments to different aspects of your current marketing strategy.
What are some of the adjustments you may need to make?
Well, you might need to:
- Increase your ad budget
- Create more authentic and engaging creative
- Target performing audiences
- Research your competition
- Collaborate with influencers
We’ll talk more about these in a short while.
But first, why bother trying to scale your ads?
You’ll find the answers to that in the next section.
3 Benefits of Scaling an Ad
Regardless of your business’s current stage, one thing is certain: you want to grow.
…and to do that, you need to scale your ads.
As promised, let’s show you why you should do that.
Benefit #1: Increase campaign performance
Scaling ads helps increase your campaign performance.
How?
By identifying ads that have performed well and scaling them.
This will further improve the campaign’s performance and give a better return on ad spend (ROAS).
You’ll also be able to track different metrics depending on your objectives such as click-through rate (CTR), cost per click (CPC), and cost per mile (CPM).
Thereby, increasing your campaign performance.
If your campaign objective is brand awareness, you can increase TikTok video views, impressions, and cost per view (CPV).
If it’s to drive conversions, you can track and improve conversion rates.
Simply put, scaling ads helps you to examine which ad strategy is performing and identifies key metrics so you have data to show the campaign is working.
Then by pouring in more resources to the ad, you’ll increase its previous performance.
Benefit #2: Improve audience targeting
Another benefit of scaling ads is that marketers will be able to improve their audience targeting.
Sometimes, targeting options are limited to marketers but with ad scaling techniques, you’ll be able to increase your campaign’s reach.
An example of this scaling technique is creating lookalike audiences.
A lookalike audience describes an audience group that’s very similar to your existing customers.
What sets them apart is that they’re already interested in your product which makes them more likely to buy from you.
We can safely say that scaling ads help you target potential customers.
That in turn, can improve the campaign’s performance.
Benefit #3: Gain valuable insights
By scaling your ads, you’ll get detailed insights into your campaign to help identify which parameters (content type, copy, or call-to-action) should be used for future campaigns and what should be expected.
You’ll be able to test different elements and find what works for your audience and industry.
It’s important to let you know that every campaign is different and, as such, you shouldn’t rely on results from previous campaigns to scale new ones.
Now, let’s get practical!
5 Strategies to Scale Your TikTok Ads
You’ve seen some of the benefits your brand will gain from scaling your TikTok ads.
…and we’ve got no doubt you want that for your business.
Your next question will be: how do I get started?
In this section, we’ll show 5 step-by-step strategies you can use to scale your business ads.
Let’s begin!
Strategy #1: Increase your TikTok ads budget
The first strategy for scaling is increasing your ad budget.
In other words, increase the amount of money you’re willing to put into your ads.
This sounds pretty straightforward, right?
However, one question that you’ll likely ask next is:
How much of an increase is enough?
You don’t want the new budget increase to be too big or too small.
Increasing your ads budget too fast can:
- Disrupt TikTok’s algorithms
- Affect the Pixel optimization
- Result in a spike in cost per action (CPA)
So, here’s what you should do instead:
Increase the daily budget by 30-50% if your ad group spends between 80-90% of the daily budget.
To do this, you need to leverage TikTok’s campaign budget optimization (CBO).
The CBO is a feature that automatically optimizes your budget at the campaign level.
In other words, you won’t have to set up budget optimization for all your ad groups individually.
Now, how do you enable CBO?
- Set up a new ad campaign on your TikTok ads account.
- Choose an Advertising Objective (lead generation, video views, app installs, reach, etc.)
- Toggle the Campaign Budget Optimization switch on
- Input a Daily Budget that all ad groups in the campaign will share
- Choose the Lowest cost Bid Strategy
- Select standard as the delivery type
- Configure the remaining ad group settings ensuring they all share the same optimization goal
- Create your ad
Another thing to note if you want to scale a TikTok ads group is to ensure that the daily budget is spent within a preferred CPA.
…and if you want the ads group to become more stable, they need to pass the TikTok ads Learning Phase.
What is this Learning Phase?
It’s the initial stage of ad delivery when the system keeps exploring potential customers to help the ad reach a more suitable audience.
This period helps train the system to provide optimum performance and optimize delivery.
Strategy #2: Get inspired by your competitors’ campaigns
You can also scale your TikTok ads by checking out what your competitors are doing.
Knowing what they’re doing will help you design your ad in such a way that it stands out.
But first, you need to know who they are.
How do you identify them? By making use of the following:
- Market research
- Analyzing SERPs
- Asking clients
- Checking social media ad platforms and forums
- Leveraging paid data
Another option is to visit TikTok’s Top Ads page to get ideas on how to improve your ads.
There, you can filter ads according to your industry, objective, duration, date posted, and metrics.
As you view ads, you will come across high-performing ads that’ll give you ideas on how to scale your ads.
Strategy #3: Partner up with influencers and creators
Another important strategy to consider if you want to scale ads is to collaborate with creators and influencers in your industry.
TikTok creators are users on the social media platform who create quality content while influencers are users who focus on building digital communities.
Why should you partner with them?
- Your audience trusts them more than your brand
According to a 2019 Trust Barometer report, about 63% of consumers say they trust an influencer’s opinion more than a brand.
Another 58% rely on an influencer’s recommendation before buying a product.
- Creators can create user-generated content (UGC) for your TikTok marketing campaigns.
84% of millennials say that UGC helps them when making buying decisions.
So, you can partner with influencers and creators to create branded content for your TikTok ad campaigns.
- To avoid ad fatigue
Ad fatigue, also known as banner blindness, happens when your audience sees your ads so much that they no longer interest them.
As a result, your engagement rates drop and the campaign stops performing.
Working with creators ensures you have a sufficient supply of fresh creatives to test and use for different ad cycles.
So, how do you collaborate with creators/influencers?
That’s where a platform such as Insense comes in. It helps you find creators to collaborate with so you can scale your ads effectively.
Here’s how it works:
- First, sign up or log in on Insense
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- Generate a creative brief
- Get matched with experienced creators for your campaign
- Work directly with them on our platform
- Receive the video content
- Expand your reach using the creator’s handle (spark ads)
Strategy #4: Leverage lookalike audiences
As stated earlier, lookalike audiences help you identify audiences that share commonalities with your existing audience.
Leveraging them means you’ll get to reach more people who are interested in your brand and product.
It also means there’s a good chance you’ll get more followers from your ad campaign including video views, engagement, sales, and more.
How does the lookalike audience work on TikTok?
Well, you need to have a custom audience.
TikTok then analyzes the attributes of the users from the custom audience you created such as interests, location, demographics, and more.
Thereafter, they find users who share similar attributes with your audience.
The degree to which the lookalike audiences are accurate is based on the custom audience you provide.
Strategy #5: Work on your ad creatives
Ad creatives refer to the videos and images users interact with when they see your TikTok ad campaign.
…and ensuring that they’re very attractive even if they’re from creators is another way to scale your TikTok ads.
People love to see beautiful eye-catching visuals.
That’s why if you had to choose between a black and white TV and a 4K TV, you'd go for the latter.
Simply put, an appealing ad attracts more people.
TikTok has a great solution for you on this and that’s using their Automated Creative Optimization (ACO).
This feature helps you manage your ads better by identifying high-performing combinations of your creatives.
With the ACO, you’ll be able to:
- Upload videos or image
- Write ad text
- Choose a call-to-action (CTA) button
Then the system automatically combines your creatives in multiple ads for your campaigns til it finds the best combination of variables and shares it with your target audience.
Let’s wrap this up!
Now Over to You
If you want to have better TikTok ad campaigns, then it’s time to start scaling your ads.
We understand that there’s a lot that goes into managing a business and running ads can be challenging.
But on the other hand, creating ads that convert is super important.
By helping you find creators to collaborate with, Insense can make scaling ads an easy process for you.
Feel free to book a demo with us to know how to get started, we’re looking forward to hearing from you.
Thanks for reading!
