TikTok Ads
If it looks like an advert, it has already been scrolled past
TikTok is not a targeting problem. It is a production problem. The businesses that do well here are the ones that can make many genuinely different pieces of native video every month, and keep making them as the old ones stop working.
What we see go wrong
Four ways a TikTok budget is spent on nothing
- The landscape film was cropped and called a TikTok ad.
- Resizing solves the frame and none of the actual problems. The pacing is wrong, the opening is a title card, the sound was mixed for a room rather than a phone, and the whole thing is built on the assumption that the viewer has already decided to watch. That is a different medium wearing a vertical costume.
- The first second is a logo.
- Attention here is granted rather than assumed, and it is granted or withdrawn almost immediately. TikTok’s own guidance is to prioritise the hook in the opening seconds and to communicate the value early. An opening that spends its most valuable moment on brand furniture is spending it on the one thing the viewer has no reason to care about yet.
- It was made to work with the sound off.
- The habit came from feeds where silent autoplay was the norm, and it does not transfer. Sound is part of how content works here, and audio-led editing, voice and music selection are production decisions rather than a finishing pass. Captions still matter for accessibility; designing for silence is different from supporting it.
- Nothing new was ready when performance dropped.
- Creative here has a short useful life, and the drop is not a bidding failure to be solved with a budget change. TikTok advises refreshing when delivery declines consistently or the number of new people reached falls, which requires a pipeline of assets rather than a decision to make more.
On TikTok the media buying is the straightforward part. The real constraint is how many genuinely different pieces of work you can put into the account each month, and whether any of them earn the first second.
That reframes what an agency is for here. Audience settings, bid strategies and placement choices matter, but they are a week of work and then a monthly review. The recurring job is production: concepts, hooks, shoots, edits, variants, and the discipline to retire something that has stopped earning its impressions.
It also reframes the budget conversation. Production is not a launch cost that ends once the campaign is live. It is a standing line item, and an advertiser who has not planned for that will run a good account into the ground within a quarter.
How the work is made
The production cycle, not the campaign build
This runs as a loop rather than a project. Each turn of it should produce assets that are different from one another in a way that teaches you something.
Mine what already exists
Customer questions, support tickets, review language, unboxing behaviour, the thing sales says on every call. Native creative is usually assembled from real material rather than invented in a workshop.
You get: Source material bank
Write hooks separately from scripts
The opening is a distinct piece of craft and deserves its own list. We write many openings against one idea, because the same message with a different first line is effectively a different ad.
You get: Hook list per concept
Shoot in batches, natively
Vertical, sound designed in, shot in the conditions the content is meant to look like it came from. Batching is what makes the volume affordable; one shoot day should feed several weeks of the account.
You get: Batch of finished assets and offcuts
Launch into structure that lets you read it
New assets go into existing ad groups where that is the right move, so the comparison is fair and the learning is not reset. The structure exists to answer questions, not to look tidy.
You get: Campaign structure with a stated read plan
Boost what deserves it through Spark Ads
Where an organic post or a creator post is already working, run the spend through that post so the engagement it earns is attributed back to the original rather than disappearing with the flight.
You get: Spark Ads authorisations and live posts
Retire on evidence and refill
Agree in advance what a finished creative looks like in the data, retire it when it gets there, and have the next batch ready. This is the step that decides whether month four looks like month one.
You get: Retirement log and refreshed queue
What we actually make
The four things that go into the account
In-feed video made for the platform
Purpose-built vertical assets, shot and edited to sit inside the feed rather than interrupt it. This is the base load of the account and the thing most brands under-produce.
Spark Ads from your own posts
Advertising run through organic posts on your account. The post keeps the likes, comments, shares and follows the spend generates, so the campaign leaves something behind.
Creator-made variants
Work made by people who make this kind of video every day, briefed properly and boosted through their own posts where the arrangement allows it. Often the fastest route to volume that does not look manufactured.
Hook and edit variants
The same core idea, re-opened several ways. Cheap to produce from existing footage and frequently the difference between a concept that is dismissed and one that runs for months.
Where we draw lines
What we commit to, and what we will not do
We will
- Tell you before we start if we think your business is a poor fit for this platform
- Agree a production cadence in writing, and treat production as a standing cost rather than a launch cost
- Write hooks as a separate deliverable, and test openings against each other rather than only testing audiences
- Follow the platform’s own creative guidance on format, sound and opening rather than importing habits from other feeds
- Retire creative on agreed evidence instead of waiting for a bad month to force the conversation
We will not
- Take the budget for a business whose buyer is a small, named list of enterprise accounts, where other channels will serve you better
- Resize an existing television or landscape asset and present it as native creative
- Buy views, followers or engagement, or work with anyone who does
- Promise a cost per acquisition, a return on ad spend or a view count, because the auction and the audience decide those
- Claim we can make something go viral, which is not a service anyone can honestly sell
Questions
Fair questions before committing to this channel
How many creatives do we actually need?
More than most teams expect, and the honest number depends on how much you are spending and how fast the audience sees the same thing twice. A single asset carrying an entire quarter is the most common reason a TikTok account underperforms.
TikTok’s own advice is to refresh when delivery shows a consistent decline or when new users reached each day fall away, and to add new creative into existing ad groups rather than constantly building new ones. That only works if there is new creative waiting.
Which businesses should not advertise on TikTok?
Businesses with a very narrow, credential-defined buyer are usually better served elsewhere: enterprise software sold to a few hundred named accounts, professional services with long procurement cycles, and anything where the decision requires a committee and a legal review.
It is also a poor fit where the product cannot be shown, where regulation makes the required informality impossible, or where the organisation genuinely cannot approve creative faster than once a quarter. We would rather say that at the start than bill for a year of it.
Can we just reuse the video we made for television or YouTube?
You can run it, and it will usually be skipped. A film built for a landscape frame with a slow open and a logo at the end is the exact shape of thing people scroll past on this platform.
Existing footage is still useful as raw material. Recutting it around a native hook, in vertical, with sound designed for phone speakers, is a different job from resizing it.
What are Spark Ads and why do you push them?
Spark Ads let you run advertising through organic posts, either your own or a creator’s, rather than uploading a standalone ad. The format keeps the ad inside the normal fabric of the app.
The commercial reason is attribution of engagement: views, comments, shares, likes and follows earned while the post is boosted are credited to the original organic post, so the media spend leaves something behind when the flight ends.
Our brand guidelines require polished production. Is that a problem?
It is a real constraint and it is worth naming early. TikTok guidance points towards a less polished, more native style precisely because that is what the surrounding content looks like, and an ad that visually announces itself as an ad starts at a disadvantage.
There is middle ground. Consistent colour, typography and product treatment can survive a native format. What rarely survives is a mandatory five-second brand intro before anything happens.
Can you tell us what results to expect?
Not in numbers, no. Auction outcomes depend on who else is bidding, what your creative earns in attention and what your landing experience does afterwards, and no agency controls those.
What we will commit to is the production cadence, the testing structure and a plain assessment at agreed checkpoints about whether the channel deserves to continue.
Work out whether you can feed this channel before you fund it
On a strategy call we look at what you can realistically produce each month, what raw material you already have, and whether your buyer is genuinely here. That conversation saves more money than any bidding decision.
If we don't deliver the work we agreed to deliver for reasons within our control, you don't pay for the undelivered work. Read our guarantee
Related
Where to go next
- the rest of the paid buyWhat else runs alongside this.
- running the organic accountSpark Ads need an organic account behind them.
- video production for marketingWhere the volume of assets actually gets made.
- working with creators directlyCreator posts can be boosted rather than recreated.
- Facebook and Instagram buying
- building awareness from a standing start
Last updated · Reviewed by Zubair Afzal