You will be able to set up a TikTok campaign and change your approach to suit the platform.
Open your TikTok profile, or wherever you keep your short videos, and find the one that has done best. Look for the one people watched to the end, commented on or shared. Keep it in mind as you read, because it is probably your first TikTok ad. Most of what you learned on Meta carries over to TikTok. The differences are in emphasis, a few TikTok-specific features and how tracking is set up.
Mei Ling, a cake maker (an invented example) from Lesson 5.1, "Ads that look like the feed, not like ads", is in this position. Her dinosaur cake clip from that lesson was still getting views weeks after she posted it. Parents commented to ask whether she delivered to Sengkang, how far ahead they needed to order and whether she could make a different dinosaur. She wondered whether paying to show the clip to more people would bring orders, and whether TikTok ads meant relearning everything she had picked up on Meta.
TikTok Ads Manager uses the same three levels as Meta: campaign, ad group and ad. The campaign holds the objective and can hold the budget. The ad group is TikTok's name for what Meta calls an ad set. It holds the audience, placements, schedule, bidding and the event to optimise for. The ad holds the creative, text, call to action and destination. Lesson 2.2, "Campaigns, ad sets and ads: who controls what", applies almost word for word.
TikTok groups its objectives into three categories: awareness, consideration and conversion. The logic of Lesson 2.1, "The objective tells the platform what to find", still holds, and so does the rule you used on Meta: choose the deepest action you can measure. TikTok also has its own automated campaign options that combine audiences and placements, similar in spirit to Meta's. Their names change, so check the current ones in TikTok's business help centre.
Targeting covers location, age, language, interests, behaviours, custom audiences and lookalikes. There are also more and more broad options, where the system finds people for you. Lesson 4.2, "Broad targeting and why platforms now push it", applies on TikTok too.
The bigger difference from Meta is how much weight the creative carries. TikTok is almost entirely full-screen vertical video, and people scroll through it fast. An ad that looks like an advert from another platform stands out for the wrong reasons. TikTok's own advertiser guidance says to make ads that look and sound like TikTok content: film vertically, keep the sound on, use real people and get to the point quickly.
Sound matters more on TikTok than on most platforms, because many people watch with the sound on. Sounds that help include a voice talking to camera, natural sound such as noise from the kitchen, and music that suits the moment. Any music in an ad must be licensed for ads. TikTok has a library of music cleared for commercial use. A popular track you used on a personal account may not be allowed in an ad.
Plan to refresh your creative often. The feed moves quickly and people see a lot of content, so an ad can tire sooner than you expect. This is called creative fatigue, and Lesson 9.2, "Scale what works without breaking it", covers it in more detail.
Spark Ads run an existing organic TikTok post as an ad, so you don't upload a separate ad video. The ad keeps the post's profile, likes and comments, and its views and engagement count towards the original post. You can run Spark Ads from your own posts, or from a creator's post with their permission.
For Mei Ling, a Spark Ad is the obvious place to start. Her clip has already shown that people watch it to the end. The comments asking about delivery stay on the ad, where they act as social proof for new viewers. If a parent who ordered from her films their child seeing the cake, a Spark Ad from that post could be even stronger, as long as she has the parent's permission.
To use a creator's post, first agree terms with the creator in writing, including how long the post may run as an ad and what you will pay. The creator then generates an authorisation code in the TikTok app and shares it with you. The code lets you run that post as an ad for a set period.
TikTok's tracking follows the same pattern as the Meta setup in module three. The TikTok Pixel records events in the browser. The TikTok Events API sends events from your server or your website platform. Deduplicate the two with a shared event ID, as explained in Lesson 3.2, "Server-side events and first-party matching". Many shop and website platforms offer a TikTok integration that sets up both the Pixel and the Events API.
Install and test tracking before you run any campaign that optimises for conversions. Without working tracking, a conversion campaign has nothing to learn from. Like Meta's, TikTok Events Manager has testing tools that show events as they arrive. You can submit a test conversion yourself and check that it shows up.
Mei Ling added a short order request form to her website, alongside WhatsApp. She installed the TikTok Pixel through her website builder's integration and set form submission as her conversion event. Then she tested it by sending her own order request. Her plan is a Spark Ad of the dinosaur clip, optimised for the form-submission event, shown to parents in the north-east and linking to the form.
Now pick your own best-performing short video. In the activity below you will plan how to turn it into a TikTok ad, tracking included.
Pick one organic TikTok or Reel that did well. Write down how you would turn it into a TikTok ad, including how you would track it.
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