The short video platform has developed rapidly in the past few years. In July 2021, TikTok’s global downloads exceeded 3 billion times, and in September 2021, it was officially announced that monthly active users exceeded the 1 billion mark. TikTok officially launched its advertising feature in 2019 as usage and downloads increased.
The data shows that TikTok’s main users are mainly young people, and 63% of TikTok users in the United States are between the ages of 10 and 29. But as the total number of users grows, so does the number of users aged 25 to 54. The huge number of users and geographic coverage make TikTok ads a good choice for cross-border e-commerce. In today’s article, I will introduce the types and characteristics of TikTok ads, the advertising process, and the comparison with Facebook ads.
TikTok Ad Types and Features
There are four types of TikTok paid ads:
In-Feed Ads
Top View Ads
Branded Hashtag Challenge
Branded Effects
In-Feed Ads
In-feed ads allow brands to achieve omnichannel marketing goals in a flexible way. Ads appear in the For You feed and are full-screen, audio ads integrated with native content. It is the only advertising method currently available to self-service advertisers, suitable for the common advertising types of e-commerce.
Top View Ads
The advertisement that appears when the user clicks on the app starts with a three- to five-second full-screen video advertisement, or it may be a picture or a moving image. After the user clicks on the page, it will jump to the corresponding link webpage. As an exclusive advertising model, users can only see one open-screen advertisement per day, which is charged according to the number of days displayed, which is expensive.
In the Brand Hashtag Challenge, the brand initiates a participatory challenge and invites TikTok users to take a short video to participate in the topic according to the required method. Generally, several dances are choreographed and then released with a specific brand Hashtag. Brands have challenge pages with brand profiles, brand links, event challenge rules, and popular videos currently participating in the challenge. Increase your brand’s exposure through interaction and create a trending trend with the community.
Branded Filters Branded Effects
Similar to Instagram’s AR filters, users can add these effects to their videos. Brands inspire engagement through customizable fun games, stickers, filters, and special effects filters, increasing brand exposure and engagement rates. It usually works in collaboration with brand label challenges to achieve better results.
Branded Hashtag Challenge
First of all, you need to be certified as a business account before you can place ads, and then you need to install pixels to collect advertising information. At present, TikTok has cooperation with several major e-commerce platforms, and there are officially certified pixel installation methods that can be set. Once you’ve set up your pixel, start creating your ads.