Here’s a historical fact: advertising on TikTok was first launched in January 2020. This is the starting point when TikTok began to overtake Instagram in terms of audience growth by 9 times. However, this Chinese social network continues to outperform both Instagram and Facebook in terms of the influx of “fresh user blood” even today.

Nutra, gambling, and crypto verticals are now doing quite well in the Chinese field and are ready to grant you a significant profit if you know how TikTok works and how to properly set up TikTok Ads. And how can you get this knowledge of launching TikTok ads correctly? In this article, we will go into detail about the nuances of TikTok Ads. And at the end of the post, as always, you’ll see some comments on the topic from our advertising experts.

Long story short: why affiliates need TikTok

• The TikTok audience today has 1 billion users around the globe and this number is growing steadily.

• By the end of the current year, the Chinese app has been downloaded and installed more than 3 million times.

• The average TikTok user spends about 1.5 hours a day on this social network.

• Time passes but the stereotype that TikTok is an application for teenagers does not completely disappear. Actual statistics show that more than 56% of the social network are people aged 25-35.

• IMPORTANT! People buy things in this Chinese app 1.6 times more actively than on Instagram, Facebook, and ANY other network. In addition, over 30% of TikTok users trust video recommendations.

• The gender distribution leans towards women, there are 56% of women on the app. And this small difference in male/female audiences is already significant, as any marketer will tell you that the female audience is always (or almost always) more active in purchases.

TikTok, due to its ethnicity, is constantly updating the system in terms of tightening the rules but innovation also applies to the latest algorithms. In 2022, the ad bidding auction has stabilized significantly. The bottom line is, before this update, bids in different niches differed up to 10 times or more, but now, advertising prices have noticeably leveled off. Well, Chinese communism has taken its toll on TikTok advertising space owners around the globe.

Also today in this wonderful Chinese application, you can set specific cities, and not just regions, as was previously. This increased the accuracy of advertising several times.

TikTok Ads: step-by-step instructions for setting up your ads

TikTok Ads business center is multifunctional. Here, you can add managers by ID, set up a pixel, or segment the target audience. As we have already said, you can set the region and city, as well as campaign goals, set device types, and other parameters of the desired audience.

Now let’s get down to the details!

Target selection

Since we are all serious people here and when we want to drive traffic, we want to get money in return. And for this, your advertising account should have 4 goals:

• conversions;

• traffic;

• lead generation;

• installs.

When your goal is to advertise your apps, you will have to add them to the social network library in advance. IMPORTANT: TikTok allows you to attach almost any tracker to monitor advertising links.

Like on Facebook, with TikTok Ads, you can also segment the target audience by gender, age, region of residence, language, and, as we mentioned already, the city of residence. You can specify ranges in almost every section. Running multilingual ads will require a separate menu.

TikTok also has an awesome setting for affiliates – the interests of the audience. It allows you to select popular types of content by authors and tags which multiplies the chances of getting profit if the audience was gathered from a particular video blogger.

And what type of content is currently most popular on the top Chinese social network is shown in the chart below.

Budget setting

Unfortunately, that wonderful time when advertising campaigns could be set up with a tiny advertising budget (up to $50) has passed a long time ago and it seems like it’s never coming back. Although the minimum bar for entry is really $10-20, in real life, you will need at least $100 to launch a campaign. And if we are talking about the average budget for running tests, that calls for about $280.

Our advice in this scenario is to use a daily budget. In order not to let your $100-$280 go down the drain, you need to monitor ad activity on a daily basis with a daily budget limit. This way, you can stretch $300 for 3-5 days.

Now, let’s add another thing about numbers. Based on analysis from different sources, at a price of about $10 per 1000 impressions, the cost of one conversion can reach up to $1.

From time to time, partners say that when an affiliate gains momentum, one install from a user can cost more than $5. Here, we must keep in mind that in the TikTok advertising auction, the one with the highest bid usually wins. During the entire life cycle of a creative, its price can significantly decrease.

Your final CPA will be clear after the ad will have been up for a few days. Teaching TikTok’s algorithm is not a quick process. You will get the best result if you download the application at least a hundred times (if you, of course, have a goal to improve this algorithm).

Launching ads

Producing and selecting creatives and their approaches for TikTok Ads is based on the popular content of the selected target audience. The Chinese social network gives you the option to make your creatives in a native editor without too much difficulty. You can also introduce interactive elements that increase engagement and eliminate skips when people view large streams of dynamic content.

Analysis and optimization

The launch of the announcement is not the end yet. Of course, affiliates must track the statistics of their TikTok campaigns day and night, analyze and optimize them in a timely manner.

What counts as the indicator of your success? First of all, a high ROI. If there are a lot of clicks, but no sales or very few of them, slow down your campaign and look for reasons why your visitors are not becoming buyers. Otherwise, draining the budget in this case is guaranteed. TikTok’s statistics do not always provide the necessary data, so it’s worth connecting a reliable tracker.

Common mistakes when setting up TikTok Ads targeting

Mistake #1 is to launch TikTok ads from undeveloped accounts or from accounts that one farms intuitively on their own.

Here is the most important advice that experts have for all newbs – it’s better to start driving traffic on TikTok with ready-made accounts that were already warmed up for the GEO of your audience. You can buy ready-made TikTok accounts in specialized online services.

Mistake #2 is to allow the payment details not correspond to the region where the advertisement is launched. If you want to drive traffic in the USA, you can’t do without a US credit card or PayPal. Any other countries’ payment service or something similar just won’t do in this case.

Mistake #3 is not to provide your phone number and an active email address, as well as all the channels that are needed for the advertising account to work in advance. You’ll get a TikTok Ads Manager automatically immediately after signing up (logging into your account). If you need to manage several accounts, you can use Business Manager. TikTok’s Business Manager works similarly to the work of Facebook’s Business Manager.

Tips and life hacks

• Re-uploading creatives

On TikTok, a simple re-upload of a good creative can help in passing moderation, even when that creative didn’t pass that moderation on the first attempt.

• Setting budget limits

Don’t get carried away even if one ad group of yours is doing a great job. Stick to the budget framework you set initially, distribute it on time between successful and unsuccessful campaigns.

• Your bids must be optimal

Fighting for the best conditions when buying advertising carries a risk of going too far and inflating your ad bids. So, follow the conditions suggested by the algorithm very steadily.

• Using automated rules

Feel free to use automated rules for certain TikTok campaigns. For example, disable some creative if it goes beyond the set span.

• Testing creatives

Tests, tests, and tests again! You should never be afraid of experimenting with different ad formats because they always increase the overall success of your campaigns.

We took a comment on the topic from a top affiliate:

Ivan Merkulov, owner of the Carbon affiliate team

Here are the tips I have for you as of November 2022:

1. It’s better to warm up even agency ad accounts for $5-7 with a traffic campaign without any settings (do not even rename the standard campaign names)

2. At the first uploads of conversion campaigns, it is better to set a small budget of $30-70 per one adset

3. If you drive traffic for gray or black offers, then it’s better to hide the most triggering messages (for moderators) into the voiceover rather than bluntly putting it into your ad copy or over your creative

4. Agency ad accounts from new geos perform very well (for example, Ecuador)

5. To reduce the odds of getting banned, make your landing pages unique. At least run pictures through a service that makes pictures unique in batches

Conclusion

To understand how to launch TikTok ads with maximum efficiency, you first need to pay attention to the quality of creatives and timely optimization. Micro budgets are practically unpromising, but average budgets from $300 can give you a strong chance of getting a profit. We advise you to experiment both with the creatives and with their formats. In addition, besides targeting, you should try another coo way of advertising – collaborating with local bloggers.

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