TikTok Ads, the news presented at TikTok World

Summary

Find creators (aka influencers who make videos)

How to create video content for ads

Innovative Advertising Formats

TikTok Ads and e-commerce

Conclusions

Last September I attended the launch event of the new Tik ok features made available to companies that want to advertise on this social network.

In particular, two macro areas were presented with advertising products suitable (according to TikTok) also for small and medium-sized companies:

• "Creative Solutions", or tools for creating content suitable for the platform dedicated to companies.

• "Commerce Solutions", or advertising tools suitable for those who have an e-commerce and want to promote it using TikTok

Below you will find a description of the possibilities and tools for running "influencer marketing" and native advertising campaigns on TikTok.

Creative Solutions: hiring creators

If you think that doing business on TikTok means you have to be a creative genius and ride every trend, well, you're wrong.

The platform knows that not all companies can invest time and money in creating creative content suitable for TikTok, and is therefore starting a process of buying and selling the skills of the creators it hosts.

In fact, TikTok's strength is its content: 79% of its users say that TikTok content is the most unique compared to other social networks (Source: Nielsen Authenticity Study 2020, Kantar Study 2021).

To advertise effectively on TikTok, you therefore need to use unique content, which sometimes doesn't seem like advertising .

To do this, companies can now use a series of tools that facilitate the creative process for companies of content that can be used in campaigns or posted by creators.

Creator Marketplace

TikTok Creator Marketplace is the official platform to find creators and hire them on TikTok. It is a self-service platform that helps you find the creators best suited to your business, thanks also to a tool that helps you discover new talent.

You can filter creators by the type of content they post, where they are located geographically, average views, and more.

In addition to the marketplace, TikTok also has API access to the creator database for a small number of specialized partners.

Open Application Campaigns

If you are looking for a long-term collaboration with a creator for an always-on campaign you can use this tool: it consists of communicating a campaign brief visible to a large number of creators in the marketplace who can join and respond.

The goal is to get you discovered by creators who are in tune with your brand and want to participate in its development.

An example of a campaign you can find on TikTok? Here it is below so you can get an idea 🤓 (no audio sorry):

If you don't understand what the product is or why it's an advertisement, get used to it: probably the advertisements that work for the generations who are now around 20 years old (but not only) will be more and more like this .

CreativeEngine

Another way to create an impactful campaign is to use the Creative Engine: a self-serve portal to reach creatives and create high-performing ads with a guided path, including a process management and insights platform.

Tools for managing content and collaborations

The new features available to advertisers and companies do not end here, however.

First of all, as on other social networks, the Branded Content Toggle has been inserted: a tool that allows creators to tag some contents as sponsored within a partnership program.

In the short term, new features will also be introduced, such as the ability to see statistics for individual campaigns of this type.

Spark Ads have also been introduced, which means the ability to sponsor content from both the creator's account and the business account, thus giving maximum visibility (240% more than other Ads).

TikTok has also released a video editor to create TikTok-friendly videos, which includes TikTok-friendly music, fonts, effects, and more.

But that's not all: a new feature called Dynamic Scene will be introduced soon.

The ability to use pre-existing videos that are broken down by artificial intelligence into single scenes, then reassembled into hundreds of variations based on audience preferences, with the addition of effects and transitions to keep the Adv always current and fresh and increase its usability (compared to other advertising platforms, Ads on TikTok age sooner: goodbye to "evergreen" campaigns and renewal of creativity every two weeks.

Video Creation

Always with the aim of facilitating access to advertising on its social network, TikTok has activated a collaboration with Vimeo and Canva.

With Vimeo Create, you can use an AI-powered tool to easily create and publish videos to the TikTok Ad Manager.

This is a collection of visual templates that are TikTok-friendly and optimized for TikTok by the in-house team with formatting, fonts, and transitions that make sense on the platform.

The same thing is available on Canva .

Innovative advertising formats

TikTok has also thought of innovative tools and formats to complete the advertising experience of the user who sees the advertisement.

A first piece is made up of Customized Instant Pages, super-fast landing pages that load 11 times faster than a normal landing page on mobile. The goal is to give more information to those who click, without interruptions in the user experience due to loading (which could lead to a click without viewing the page).

Another very interesting detail is the Pop-out showcases, the possibility of inserting clickable pop-up elements in the videos that emphasize the product elements:

Added to this feature are the gestural calls to action, called Gestures , which invite you to discover more information by interacting with the video 👇🏼. But it doesn't end there: the "Story Selection" function is also rolling out, which allows users to choose how to end an ad.

E-commerce tools

Here you are at the e-commerce tools section. TikTok is also moving towards the native shopping experience, that is, the possibility of purchasing without leaving the app.

All this is included in TikTok Shopping (does it remind you of anything 😂?) which can already be integrated with all the main CMS platforms for creating websites (including our beloved Wix ).

In case the integration is not yet available, TikTok claims to be able to quickly activate shopping by directly taking care of the product catalog, shipping and the last mile!

Of course, by activating TikTok shopping you can insert links to products into your content as well as the possibility of doing live broadcasts to promote a specific product.

Lead generation modules have been launched, integrating with Zapier and Leadsbridge to connect the collected contacts with your CRM.

Another very interesting tool is the integration between the concept of Dynamic Showcase Ads (automatic advertisements that choose products from an e-commerce feed and show them to people via the algorithm) and TikTok content.

What emerges are automatic templates that integrate product photos into a TikTok-like visual experience:

Added to these are more standard " collection ads " (linked carousels) that include titles, photos and links to products, linking them to a fast-loading product gallery: the latter are recommended for temporary promotions, showing best-selling products, and promoting the launch of new collections.

Conclusions

The way you get discovered by your audience is changing, and the formats above are an example of that.

Entertaining instead of selling, interacting in the App instead of driving traffic to e-commerce. These are the real challenges for the months and years to come.

And you? What do you think about these formats? Advanced copy and paste or new ways of advertising?