TikTok as a platform and TikTok advertising, in particular, is taking the digital marketing world by storm and more and more brands and marketers use TikTok for business.
Have you thought of jumping on this trend as well?
If your answer is “yes”, we’ve got good news for you:
This guide is here to help you get started with TikTok ads.
Specifically, we’ll cover:
- The most popular ad formats
- Tips on how to create the best TikTok ad creatives
- TikTok ad scaling and content optimization tips
Let’s see what creative tools you can use to create killer ad creatives.
But first, what exactly is an ad creative?
What’s a TikTok Ad Creative?
A TikTok ad creative, similar to a Facebook ad, is an ad in the form of an image or video that TikTok users interact with when they open the app, scroll through their For You feed, and so on.
To better understand what an ad creative is, we need to have a look at TikTok’s ad structure.
As you can see in the image above, upon creating a TikTok ad campaign, you have the ability to build separate ad groups that can contain multiple ad creatives or ads.
This structure helps you have a granular analysis of what ad creative works best for delivering the message of your current campaign.
Now let’s see what an ad creative looks like.
Here’s an example of TikTok ad creative that popped up when opening the app this morning.
It’s a short video ad that promotes Wise—a multi-currency, money transfer app.
The ad uses a combination of colorful motion graphics, a voice-over recording, and captions. At first glance, it might seem like a very standard content piece.
But did you know that adding captions to your TikToks can bring you a 55.7% increase in impressions?
When it comes to ads, few things are left to chance.
In the same way, choosing the right ad format for your campaign can make a huge difference.
Let’s explore the most popular ad formats below.
The 4 Ad Types that Work Best on TikTok
There are multiple ad formats for you to choose from when creating a TikTok ad campaign.
All of those types serve different purposes and are suitable for various campaign objectives—and we’ll tell you all about it in a jiffy.
But before that, it’s important to note that we will discuss only the ad types that work best for TikTok.
Let’s see the first one.
1. TopView Ads
The first ad type we'll have a look at is the TopView ad—a full-screen, 60 second-long immersive video ad.
This TikTok ad type is displayed at the top of a user's For You feed and is viewed by users first thing when opening the app.
According to TikTok, this type of ad can help brands that sell consumer packaged goods register a 67% increase in sales effectiveness compared to other TikTok ad types.
What’s more, the same TikTok post states that 71% of users report that TopView ads are attention-grabbing.
Below, you can see an example of a TopView TikTok ad promoting a handbag from Balenciaga.
When opening the TikTok app, this type of ad is the first thing you see.
It offers an immersive experience and captures the user’s attention by eliminating all the distractions.
But this is not the only effective ad placement you can opt for on TikTok. Have a look at the next type.
2. In-Feed Ads
The TikTok In-Feed ads are also placed in users’ For You feed.
The difference here is that the ad will be randomly placed within a feed rather than being the first thing a user interacts with when opening TikTok.
This ad type allows you to promote your product or brand via a vertical video of up to 60 seconds that mimics native content to capture a user’s attention.
Both the In-Feed and TopView ads are great for:
- Reaching a wide audience and improving brand awareness
- Driving traffic to your website
- Getting app installs
- Boosting video views
- Increasing conversion rates
- Lead generation
Another similarity between the two ad types is the custom call to action button you can add at the end of your video ad, according to your campaign objective.
For instance, you can add a “Learn More” CTA button to prompt users to visit a landing page to read about a new product or project of yours.
In the screenshot below, you can see an example of an In-Feed ad from Solado, an e-commerce fashion store.
Here, the campaign objective is to get viewers to visit the brand’s website and shop the new collection.
Next, we’re going to discuss a more premium ad type.
3. Brand Takeover Ads
A Brand Takeover ad comes in the form of an image or GIF.
Moreover, the ad is displayed in full-screen mode and is placed at the top of the For You page.
We said it's more premium because it offers exclusivity.
Specifically because only a single brand can run a Brand Takeover ad for a particular category for a full day.
This means that users will see, for example, Brand Takeover ads from a single beauty brand per day.
For this reason, the Brand Takeover ad is among the most high-performing ads available in the TikTok Ads Manager.
The last TikTok ad we’re going to cover inside this guide is the hashtag challenge ad.
4. Branded Hashtags Ads
Last but not least, we have to talk about Branded Hashtag ads.
This ad type helps brands connect to their audience through a challenge. Namely, brands can challenge their followers to film themselves performing different actions.
The resulting video content would then be uploaded on TikTok under the hashtag of the challenge.
As an example, you can look at the #AySauceChallenge branded hashtag challenge from ASOS. To be a part of the challenge, the audience had to create a 15-second video showcasing three outfits.
Upon uploading their creative content with their outfit ideas, the participants had to use the #AySauceChallenge hashtag as part of their video description.
The campaign got 2.5 billion views!
That’s huge!
As you can probably already tell, hashtag challenges can help brands drive massive engagement and brand awareness.
If you’d like to take a closer look at TikTok advertising, you can read our guide on TikTok ads which covers more ad types as well as inspiring examples.
Now we’re ready to get to work and start creating your first ad creative.
Create Winning TikTok Ad Creatives in Just 4 Steps
The previous section introduced you to different types of TikTok ads. Now, we’re going to have a look at the best practices for creating content for your ads.
Specifically, we’ll discuss the four steps you need to take to create winning TikTok ad creatives.
Let’s take the first step together!
Step #1: Choose the products you’re going to advertise.
All social platforms appeal to a certain group of demographics. you need to keep this in mind when choosing the products you're going to promote on any social media platform.
For instance, TikTok’s advertising audience is mostly female.
What does this tell us?
Let’s have a closer look!
The Digital 2022 Global Overview report found that TikTok’s ad audience is 57% female across all age groups.
However, the most prevalent age groups are the 18 to 44 ones, as you can see in the graphic below.
Based on the data above, maybe advertising a product that targets a 55+ years old audience on TikTok would not yield the expected results.
Another thing you can do to ensure you’re reaching the right people is to define your target audience.
See why below.
Step #2: Define your target audience
Defining your target audience is another important step in the process of creating an engaging ad creative.
This step will help you figure out what kind of creatives would best resonate with your audience.
TikTok advises brands to target people based on their interests rather than other factors.
"When looking for your audiences on TikTok, it’s important to stop thinking about “who” your audience is and to start thinking about “what” interests them."
And this changes everything!
Instead of creating virtual buyer personas with strict demographic and psychographic characteristics, you can create a target audience based on people’s preferences and interests.
For instance, if your business sells food supplements, you could target people that are interested in workouts, healthy living, and so on; without restricting the targeting settings based on age, gender, location, etc.
Got it! What’s next?
Step #3: Edit your ad creatives for better performance
For this step, take a moment to look at content from influencers and brands in your niche.
See what video formats they're using and if you can identify any trend or similarity between the different content pieces.
Look at the number of hearts, shares, and comments each video has.
Even though those are not ads, they offer you valuable insights into what your target audience consumes in terms of TikTok content.
Next, try to incorporate the identified elements into your ad creatives to boost ad performance.
Maybe some fun motion graphics added on top of your video will spark your viewers’ interest more than plain content.
It all depends on what your audience wants and is used to receiving.
Don’t know what that might look like?
Head over to the next step.
Step #4: Partner with content creators
We’ll tell you a secret: we wouldn't know how to create and edit a TikTok video that could remotely compare to one created by influencers on our platform, Insense.
Collaborating with an experienced TikTok video editor that was born knowing what smart video soundtrack to add to any video sounds like a great idea, right?
Instead of using cliche video templates that people are tired of seeing, you can leverage a creator’s out-of-the-box perspective on TikTok content.
Why not?
Outsourcing your video production might give you the creative assets you didn’t even know your small business needed.
This way, you’ll never have to worry about aspect ratio, ad copy, ad text, video editing, and all the like.
Your creative collaborator with an extensive background in social media marketing will provide you with awesome ads ready for your TikTok audience.
This way, all that will be left for you to do is sit back and keep an eye on your ad spend and relevant metrics such as the click-through rates of your ads.
Plus, collaborating with content creators will also enable you to scale your ads sustainably.
See how in the next section.
Create TikTok Ads at Scale (the Easy Way!)
Creating one TikTok ad every other month might not be sufficient to actually get the wanted results.
And for a small growing business, it’s not realistic to hire a full-time content creator because—let’s face it—you will not need that much content.
But those are not your only two options.
You can create TikTok ad creatives at scale without having to sleep in your office.
How?
In short, you can use Insense to find reliable and creative content creators that can handle your projects.
To do so, you can either:
- Browse our Creator Marketplace
- Fill out a content brief and post your project on our platform
When going through the TikTok Creator Marketplace, you are able to filter search content creators based on multiple criteria, such as:
- Social media ad platforms (i.e., Instagram, Tiktok)
- Location (i.e., U.S., Australia, Japan, Brazil, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, etc.)
- Audience demographics (i.e., gender, age, etc.)
And more!
What’s more, you have the ability to visit influencers' profiles and see ad examples, pieces of content from previous projects, audience details, and other relevant aspects.
The other method in which Insense can help you start a collaboration with a creator is by filling out a detailed brief about your project.
Then, your project will be posted on our platform (similar to a job posting).
After that, the content creators can review and apply to your post accordingly.
For a step-by-step tutorial on how to find the right creators for your content needs, you can read our post on influencer briefing.
Now let’s see why you need a TikTok marketing partner like Insense and what implications this has for your business.
TikTok Marketing Partners 101
First, let’s see what a TikTok Marketing Partner is.
Well, a TikTok Marketing Partner is a vetted service provider with extensive experience in:
- TikTok campaign management
- Ad performance measurement and analysis
- Content creation
- Augmented reality (AR) effects
- Commerce
- Sound
In other words, TikTok Marketing Partners are an official community of TikTok experts that can help brands create, run, and measure successful marketing campaigns.
And guess what?
We’re one of them!
That’s right—Insense is officially recognized as a content marketing expert by TikTok.
You can see the complete Partner Directory on the designated TikTok article.
How’s this helpful?
First, this is proof that our services have passed the quality standards of TikTok.
Second, you can rest assured that your content is taken care of by vetted experts.
Moreover, our TikTok partnership drove us to provide our customers with direct integrations with TikTok’s Ad Manager.
Super convenient, right?
We can show you how it works in a few seconds.
But first, let’s wrap things up.
Now Over to You
We hope you now have the necessary knowledge and tools to manage the creation of TikTok ad creatives for your upcoming ad campaigns.
We’d like to help you further in your TikTok marketing journey by offering you a free demo with Insense.
Let us show you how Insense can help you get access to the most creative digital marketing minds of the hour.
Book your free demo with Insense today and leverage the perks of professionally-made content.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Q1. Is TikTok good for advertising?
Yes, TikTok is becoming more and more popular among digital marketers today.
Moreover, TikTok offers a wide range of ad formats and ad placement options that can suit any brand’s advertising needs.
Plus, TikTok ads tend to have higher engagement rates than other advertising platforms at a relatively lower cost per impression (although some ad types can have very steep pricing points).
Q2. What are the benefits of TikTok ads?
The benefits of advertising on TikTok include:
- Reaching a wide audience
- It's affordable and easy to use
- People trust influencers’ recommendations
- High engagement rates
- A variety of ad types and formats to choose from
- TikTok ads facilitate brand awareness and brand exposure
