TikTok Ads? Oh, Please! If you belong to that common breed of people who take TikTok Ads lightly, you are highly mistaken. Do you know that contrary to the popular misconception, running ads on TikTok can actually give your brand dividends?
First, let’s burst your bubble. There’s a whole gamut of serious business opportunities beyond the sea of memes and trolls around the popular social media app. It was in April 2022, when TikTok managed to hit the bull’s eye of 1 billion active users spreading across the globe.
Anyone who looks down on the app (mostly guided by popular social media notions) will find it difficult to come to terms with this jaw-dropping number. However, they can’t help but acknowledge that it speaks volumes about its reach.
The user engagement of TikTok is quite striking to say the least. At present, TikTok ads are capable of reaching an estimated adult (18+) audience of 825 million people worldwide, which is indeed a staggering number. Just for your information, 84% of marketers increased their investment in TikTok last year, only to capitalize on this huge user base.
When we have a close look at the app’s market reach, we get astonished to know that it has successfully expanded into over 150 markets around the world, within a span of just a few years, a fact that makes the feat even more unreal.
TikTok proudly claims that its users are 1.5 times more likely to purchase a product after seeing it advertised on TikTok. This certainly makes it a happy hunting ground for global businesses, especially the B2C brands.
Another common misconception about TikTok is that most of the users are aged between 16 and 24. Which is largely untrue, as only 41% of them do fall into this age category. Which means that 59% of the popular social media platform is attributed to users from the Millenial, GenX, and even Baby Boomer generations. Therefore, it sums up to another important USP of the app – a diverse user base, something that appears way too lucrative for B2C brands.
You would be surprised to know that within the past 18 months, the number of US adult TikTok users has grown a whopping 5.5 times. Hence, we can easily understand that TikTok is blessed with a huge user base that’s quite diverse in nature and continues to grow by leaps and bounds.
Therefore, it can be fairly assumed that running ads on TikTok isn’t as bad an idea as we thought it to be in the first place. No offense meant! Why so serious? Though TikTok means serious business, as evident from our discussion so far, it offers enough room to act as a more than decent stressbuster.
But most of us are not well aware about TikTok ads. Let’s delve deeper with the story to discover its many facets. Here we go!
[Image Credit: Freepik]
TikTok Ads: Insights, Hacks and How Not to Mess it Up
TikTok is much more than the reels that usually get circulated around us. To begin with, there’s something called ‘TikTok For Business’, which happens to be an all-in-one tool for marketers to advertise on TikTok. For the uninitiated, it helps marketers through the entirety of the critical process of creating advertisements, setting budgets, reaching target audiences, and analyzing campaign data. Hence, making it an absolute cakewalk for them.
Surprised? There are more to follow. It comes with an in-house e-learning service that helps businesses sharpen their creative blade and get accustomed with how to make advertisements on the Ads Manager platform. Supercool, right? No doubt about that!
There’s only one marketing format for businesses to use on TikTok and that is none other than video advertisements. With the help of the TikTok For Business Ads Manager platform, brand marketers can seamlessly create these advertisements, and there are five different formats to choose from. These are namely – TopView Ads, In-Feed Ads, Branded Hashtags, Brand Takeovers and Branded Effects. Now let’s discuss each one of them in detail to have a clear understanding of what’s exactly in store.
TopView Ads
The TopView ads will pop up once in a day, just after a user opens their app for the first time. Interestingly, they can be up to 60 seconds long, making it the perfect choice for businesses willing to advertise products or services that need an extended attention time, something like TV or movie trailers.
You must take note that the TopView ads will be shown right at the top of the user feed. The same applies to Brand Takeover ads (we will come to it later on). Also remember that the span time should be atleast 5 seconds.
In case you are skeptical, studies have revealed that the longer run-time successfully manages to bear fruit, as a whopping 71% of users went on to say that the TopView ads were able to grab their eyeballs.
In-Feed Ads
In-Feed Ads are self-service ads, which you can create on your own with the help of the TikTok Ad Manager interface. It has five different variants. These are – Image ads, Video ads, Spark ads, Pangle ads and Carousel ads. Here follows a brief description of each of them.
Image ads
You can run the Image ads only in TikTok’s News Feed apps – BuzzVideo, TopBuzz, and Babe. You just need to include an image, brand or app name, and ad text. That’s it. Aren’t they quite plain and simple? Indeed. Cool too.
Video ads
Video ads have multiple uses. On one hand, they can be run for TikTok itself and on the other hand, you can set them rolling for the TikTok family of news apps as well. Their usual run-time is between 5 and 60 seconds. These videos are full-screen in nature and appear in the user’s For You feed. For each of these ads, you have to include a video, an ad display image, brand or app name, and an ad text.
Spark ads
Thanks to Spark ads, you can ensure that your brand gets serious boosts in terms of organic content from your own account or from other users. TikTok research has revealed that Spark Ads are very handy as they come with a 24% higher completion rate and 142% higher engagement rate as compared to standard In-Feed ads.
Pangle ads
These Ads are placed courtesy of the TikTok Audience Network. Pangle’s video platform connects to TikTok to come up with video, native and banner ads. However, there’s a catch. The Pangle ads are only available to a handful of countries, at least as of now.
Carousel ads
The Carousel ads can be operated only in TikTok’s News Feed apps – BuzzVideo, TopBuzz, and Babe. In this regard, they are similar to the Image ads. They are capable of including up to 10 images with unique captions per ad.
In-Feed ads would appear as the fourth video, a user sees while scrolling through their “For You” feed, the place where they land when they open the app. Remember that a ‘For You’ feed comprises videos that the algorithm believes would appeal to the user based on their previous app activity. We must refer to the study conducted by Neuro-Insight, which discovered that TikTok In-Feed ads attain 23% higher detail memory than TV ads.
Another important aspect about the In-Feed ads, happens to be the fact that they can feature a CTA, something which makes them extremely useful for brand marketers eyeing to make the most of the platform to engineer sales and conversions.
Branded Hashtags
Branded Hashtags happen to be advertisements that businesses come up with to inspire TikTokers in creating content around a brand-related hashtag of their choice. In this case, the brand using this specific ad format will continue to enjoy exclusive access to the hashtag, unlike what happens on other social media sites.
But Branded Hashtags are quite pricey as they come with reported average costs of almost $150,000 USD for six days. Brands can feel free so far as opting to use hashtag generator platforms are concerned. They can come really handy by providing businesses with numerous hashtags based on their inputs and in sync with their respective campaigns.
It has been closely observed that though the investment is hefty, it pays off. However, the ad type has a median engagement rate of just 17.5%. But it has been also seen that almost 77% of TikTok users like it when brands come up with new challenges, trends, or memes for them to join in with. Therefore Branded Hashtags can help your brand have a direct dialogue with your audience. That’s indeed a huge perk!
Brand Takeovers
Brand Takeovers are a specific ad format that can comprise TopView, In-Feed, and Branded Hashtags. Puzzled? Yes, they can actually strike a rare amalgamation of the all three. Now comes the most important part, the hook.
You would be shell shocked to know that TikTok only offers room to one business per day. Therefore, it ensures your brand gets an ultra-edge over others, when it comes to visibility. However, as it happens, rare privilege comes with a heavy price. You have to sanction a steep pocket-pinch as the starting cost is sky-high, going up to almost around $50,000 USD per day.
Branded Effects
Branded Effects ads incorporate 2D, 3D, or AR technology in order to blend images of your products into TikTok videos. We have long witnessed that more often than not, brands heavily invest themselves in typically producing stickers of their products or filters that TikTokers can use when creating their videos.
This is a great hack as with the passage of time, these filters and stickers see an increased engagement and help to create brand awareness, almost silently. If used meaningfully, they can turn out to be instrumental in leveling up the game of your brand and strengthening your business by manifold.
Technical Details
There are some technicalities you need to keep in mind before going ahead with creating TikTok ads for your brand.
Aspect Ratio: Any of these three options are permissible – 9:16, 1:1, or 16:9.
Video Resolution: The resolution must be any of the following variants – ≥ 540 x 960 px, ≥ 640 x 640 px, or ≥ 960 x 540 px.
File Type: Anything among the following, is good to go – .mp4, .mov, .mpeg, .3gp, or .avi
Length: Up to 60 seconds max. However, TikTok itself recommends 9 to 15 seconds.
Please be cautious about these above-mentioned parameters before creating ads for TikTok, so that you don’t end up inviting unnecessary trouble in the end.
Meanwhile, you can check out these 5 Kid-friendly Apps like TikTok, just in case you are willing to explore some safe alternatives. Be it out of caution or out of the drive to break the monotony, they are going to interest your mind, if not your greycells, for sure.
