Are you a mobile advertiser considering exploring alternatives during this 800+ million global DAU channel with an exploding popularity in the US?Source: Business of Apps and Google TrendsLook no similarly for everything you need to set up and run your very first set up optimized crusade. This post covers three parts: A efficiency Case Study 3 week test abstract and channel assessment for one appTargeting all the levers you could pull Creative summary, demanding situations and best practicesPart 1: Performance Case Study 3 week test abstract and high level channel comparisonWeek 1 exploration phase. With a goal to identify scale, CPI and profitability capabilities from our test budget, we began in iOS as a result of they’re usually the bread and butter users. After the primary few days of being live, we started to increase daily budgets by 25% and expanded to Android, which rapidly chewed us through our test budget.
By day 7, the expansion knowledge was beyond obtrusive. Optimization learnings: Bid level first we ran bid tests to examine scale vs cost effectivity the pinnacle room on CPA from our preliminary, higher bids was over 50%, so we rapidly tested 50% bid reductions on new ad groups. We were able to still achieve the same amount of scale as those ad groups of higher bids, but at a far more efficient CPI. Auto vs non auto inventive optimization auto creative optimization quickly diagnosed from 4 videos a mixture of user generated content material and lively and 3 text assets, which combo to move forward with in non auto creative ad groups. Standard vs.
speeded up budget birth after testing both, we decided to maneuver ahead with standard. CPM regardless of TikTok being restricted to pick advertisers, we didn’t always see all time low CPMs as anticipated. Ad engagement CTR and CVR trended considerably higher than other channels for iOS, but keep in mind this was also really based on creative wins. You can ask your TikTok reps for CPM, CTR and CVR benchmarks for your app category to guide your efforts. Data illustrated is relative to a benchmark common of all channels for one app in this case study.
Challenges: unlike any other channel, even if it was a brand spanking new ad, or an existing ad from the creative library that had already served in yet another ad group, any ad change would force an entire ad group back into review. We missed out on a few days of high volume skills thanks to creatives launched outdoor of the US ad review team operating hours. Fortunately, there has been a change in the algorithm advantageous April 28 for edits in ongoing ad groups to no longer pause all the ad group for review!Week 2 scale capabilities at amazingly low CPI trends. We spent the last of our test budget by day 10 and began to get more competitive with budget raises up to 50% at a time, but CPI started to increase too. At that point, our TikTok Account Manager recommended it was likely due to artistic fatigue as our top ads were serving for almost 2 weeks.
Optimization learnings: Gender split we higher scale on female only focused on by 2x that of male and feminine. New creatives introduced 5 7 new ads per ad group but problem find extra wins more under challenges. Bid changes TikTok best practice suggests raising bids whenever CPA exceeds bid. We tested 3 10% increments and for the most part, didn’t find much improvement. Instead we moved to a higher, fresh ad group or inventive test. Challenges: only 1 ad out of 3 5 ads per ad group would acquire all the impressions and spend, so it was definitely a challenge to gather data on new creatives as a result of we could not get them to serve.
We tested separate ad groups dedicated to new creative as well as temporary pauses on top spenders to force impressions to others. Week 3+ overall findings and why we are incorporating TikTok as part of our UA method. Our test showed TikTok to be an extraordinarily profitable ad channel, especially as the platform according to our TikTok team skews 3 Android:7 iOS users. The proof is in the pudding peep that D7 ROAS!And as that you would be able to see, TikTok CPI was really low-priced relative to other active channels. Data illustrated is relative to a benchmark common of all channels for one app during this case study.
TikTok’s learning phase: Each channel has its own period of learning where the algorithm looks to reach probably the most suited users to your ads. TikTok is most akin to Facebook except from the 7 day rule where an ad group requires 50 conversions to escape the studying phase. The algorithm will try to push new ad groups until it reaches 20 conversions, which TikTok calls the “cold phase”. It’s recommended to go away every thing untouched while in learning unless efficiency completely tanks or it seems impossible to obtain a minimum of 20 conversions in 10 days. If the ad groups aren’t serving, then you could try a restart at a more robust bid and/or audience and artistic changes. Keep bid changes within 20% increments.
Budgets can be higher up to 50% at a time with out forcing the ad group back into review. Daily budgets should be set no less than 20x your bid. Since there are no current studying and public sale overlap tools like Facebook, it’s best to maintain track of your daily conversions and commit most of the people of your daily spend on ad groups out of the studying phase. Having too many ad groups in the studying phase may hinder efficiency. Additionally, TikTok recommends to avoid using the majority clone function on present ad groups and as a substitute launch fresh new ad groups. Part 2: Targeting all of the levers that you may pullWhether your goal is app installs, conversions, or traffic, you control your goal at the crusade level.
Next, the ad group. Broken up into 6 levers and where you have got all the power. Placements: available placements by place. Ad details: select your app, show name, category, and up to 20 ad tags that describe your app call to mind your ASO keywords!. The set of rules will do it’s best to use tags to check your ads with their viewers.
You also can turn commenting on/off. TikTok has not explicitly said it is best practice by some means, but bear in mind feedback can help the ad look more native to the UI. To preview an ad and/or view feedback, you need to down load the app and follow these steps. Creative type: select whether you want automated artistic optimization on or off – bring to mind Facebook’s dynamic artistic optimization. You give the ad group up to 10 ads and 5 text assets and the set of rules does the rest to locate the ideal combo. If you utilize auto creative optimization, note right here: you cannot manually toggle ads on/off.
Instead that you may add and “delete” at the create level. At lower budgets, be wary of having too many ads live as the general public of impressions and spend will fall to one ad and you will not be in a position to learn from those that don’t serve. If you happen to have the issue that the general public of creatives aren’t getting enough site visitors to be told from – we would put forward forcing impressions through separate ad groups or a committed testing crusade. Set a target for a way many impressions, conversions, installs, etc. you will need before you progress onto a better test.
Targeting: viewers, demographics, hobby class and deviceAudience: create from a buyer file, engagement, app exercise or website traffic. Read more about custom audiences here. Note that for lookalikes, it’s suggested to have a cohort size of at the very least 1000. Demographics: Location available in over 20 countries. Gender Age – no limit or increments of 13 17, 18 24, 25 34, 35 44, 45 54, 55+We put forward beginning with a broad audience and then breaking out simultaneous gender and age tests pending your first few day trends. TikTok says that so long as the targeting is not too specific and detailed that the ad groups are not compete in opposition t one another.
LanguageInterest category over 15 to choose fromDevice: connection type, carriers, device price, OSBudget and Schedule: can control budget at the campaign or ad group level. In TikTok’s latest state, billing is finished via what they call “top up requests”. Essentially, an advertiser sends email requests with a “top up” amount, which then turns into the available account balance in the ads supervisor. Monthly invoices are emailed with bank transfer account assistance. At this time they simply help wire transfers, but our TikTok team said they’re internally operating on an automatic billing system. We got notifications in the ads supervisor and via email when our budget was pacing to spend the closing account balance 3 days beforehand.
It’s crucial to carefully video display budget pacing as you fund the account to ensure you don’t fail to notice volume due to insufficient account balance. Bidding and Optimization TikTok is CPC ads platform, so your default will be click as the optimization goal and billing event. The particulars on TikTok attribution logic found in their ads attribution documentation states, “We recommend the clicking through attribution window to be 7 days, and the view through attribution window to be 1 day. Installations and activations beyond the attribution window are regarded biological actions and could not be attributed to TikTok Ads”. Read more about TikTok Third Party Tracking here.
You should work along with your TikTok team on a counseled starting point. Don’t be afraid to get curious with checking out lower bids to force cheaper price installs. You can always work backwards start high, lower over time, or start low, raise through the years. Like a bid cap in Facebook, and max bid in Snapchat, the essential bid strategy in TikTok will control your average cost around or less than your bid. There is a max conversion bidding that gets essentially the most conversions for your budget it truly is in beta. Read more on bidding best practices.
AEO is also presently in beta and available for select money owed once enough collected events are reached. Events are categorized by upper funnel events reminiscent of login rate and registration rate, which are looking to have at least a 10% CVR before which you can unlock AEO. And deeper funnel events corresponding to purchase rate, need to have no less than a 1% CVR, changing 20+ events per day. You can work with your TikTok team for concepts and bids. Delivery type: primary or speeded up budgetKeep TikTok’s crusade optimization guidelines handy to ensure that you do’re following all best practices.
Part 3: Creative summary, demanding situations and best practicesBy the top of our third week of checking out, we had gathered data on 33 ads 10% of these 33 ads were top performers from other channels. We certainly identified 3 new top spenders that were iterations or constantly subpar performers in other channels. As which you could see in the chart below, 40% of our spend was on one single ad and anything else of the spend was dispensed to ads 2 and 3 per our in advance call out, we faced the problem of getting more than 1 2 ads to serve. Creative hits can be your keys to success. Which is why it’s really crucial to review up on TikTok’s ad policy to minimize rejections in order that you move through your inventive trying out backlog with fewer roadblocks along the style.
Especially for AR, action and casino games, the ad policy could make it much more difficult to re goal what might have worked in other channels for TikTok. We skilled a lot of ad review inconsistency across campaigns and ad groups because a review team carried out an inventive inspection first, and then a top quality handle team conducted a second review. At least TikTok includes a “reason” to every rejected ad, offering some insight into what has to be fixed. Some examples below: “The ad points content which violates public morals or public order, which is illegitimate in our ad policy. ”“The ad features sexually suggestive content. ”“The ad features sensitive content material associated with war.
This could come with disrespectful actions, words, or symbols associated with war. ”Saving the good for last creative best practices:Video length has to be at the least 9s in another way the “down load” card won’t appear. Max 60s note that ad engagement is not measurable in TikTokShorter may not always be better, test various increments i. e 10s, 20s, 30s, 40s+ videos to locate what works best. Optimize for sound on. Portrait orientation is best, but experiment with panorama and square as it’s also supported.
Our TikTok team shared a high level summary from an internal case study that diagnosed portrait ads have up to 7x more engagement. Check out all of the ad specs here. Update creatives no less than every 7 days to keep your ads fresh TikTok advised. Start with top performers in other networks but don’t be stunned if they don’t work. Remember that TikTok user behavior is completely different from other channels.
Be able to test various differences influencer, gameplay, text overlay, split screen response style videos and voice overs one after the other and together until you discover your perfect combo. Use “swipe left” as your CTA in its place of “swipe up” as a result of only swiping left will take the user to the app store. And avoid buttons or “click here” as a result of clicking any place but that down load card on the ad will definitely pause the video. Make sure creatives account for the safe zones and the download card. Image from TikTok Placement documentationTikTok’s learning phase: Each channel has its own period of studying where the algorithm looks to reach the most suited users for your ads. TikTok is most akin to Facebook except from the 7 day rule where an ad group calls for 50 conversions to escape the studying phase.
The algorithm will try to push new ad groups until it reaches 20 conversions, which TikTok calls the “cold phase”. It’s suggested to depart every thing untouched while in studying unless performance completely tanks or it seems very unlikely to achieve at the least 20 conversions in 10 days. If the ad groups aren’t serving, then you could try a restart at a much better bid and/or viewers and creative changes.