TikTok has emerged as a powerful platform for brands to connect with their audience creatively and engagingly. If you’re considering advertising on TikTok, understanding the various TikTok ad placements available is essential to ensure that your campaigns are impactful and successful. Let’s explore more about ad placements in this article.
Table of Contents
What are TikTok Ad Placements?
TikTok Ad Placements are strategic options within the platform where your ads can appear, allowing you to target specific audiences and optimize your advertising campaign.
Moreover, TikTok offers 5 main ad formats for ad placements, allowing advertisers to create engaging and creative content:
- In-Feed Ads: These are short video ads that appear in users’ “For You” feed as they scroll through TikTok. In-Feed ads allow advertisers to create content that seamlessly integrates with the user’s feed.
- TopView Ads: These are full-screen video ads that appear when users open the TikTok app. TopView Ads offer a highly visible and immersive experience.
- Brand Takeover: Similar to TopView Ads, Branded Takeovers are full-screen ads that appear when users open the app. These ads can include images, GIFs, or videos, allowing brands to capture attention immediately.
- Branded Effects: Advertisers can create and promote custom augmented reality (AR) effects on TikTok with Branded Effects. Users can then use these effects in their own videos, providing an interactive and engaging brand experience.
- Branded Hashtag Challenges: Advertisers can create challenges with branded hashtags to encourage user participation. Users then create and share content related to the challenge, helping to boost brand engagement.
Key Factors of TikTok Ad Placements
Unlike traditional ad platforms, TikTok offers a diverse range of ad positions, and ad formats, giving you granular control over who sees your message.
Campaign Goals
TikTok placements can help achieve various advertising goals, including:
- Driving shop purchases
- Boosting product sales
- Increasing video views
- Expanding reach
- Generating traffic
- Capturing leads
- Encouraging app installs
- Maximizing conversions
Supported Bidding Types
You can choose from three bidding methods:
- CPM (cost per mille)
- CPC (cost per click)
- oCPM (optimized cost per mille)
Ad Placement
Advertisements may be featured in:
- For You Feed
- Following Feed
- Profile Feed
- Search results
- New onsite Shopping Ads placements on TikTok and TikTok Lite
The Importance of TikTok Ad Placements
TikTok ad placements are crucial for maximizing the success of your advertising campaigns on the platform. Choosing the right placements can make a significant difference in results of your campaign:
Reach the right audience
- TikTok offers a variety of placement options, allowing you to tailor your ad delivery to specific audiences with their demographics, interests, and behaviors.
- This ensures that your ads are seen by the people most likely to be interested in what you have to offer, increasing the chances of engagement and conversion.
>>> Read more: 6 Warning Signs of Your TikTok Ads Not Converting? How to Fix it
Optimize for different campaign goals
Different placements are better suited for different TikTok campaign objectives. For example:
- If you want to drive website traffic, you might prioritize placements like the “For You” feed or brand search results.
- If you’re aiming for brand awareness, you should consider placements like TopView ads or Hashtag Challenges.
Maximize engagement and clicks
Certain placements are more likely to capture users’ attention and encourage them to interact with your ad. By selecting placements that are known to be effective for your specific goals, you can boost your campaign’s overall performance. For instance:
- In-feed video ads tend to have higher engagement rates than Banner ads.
Control your ad spend
- TikTok offers various bidding strategies and budget options, allowing you to control how much you spend on each placement.
- This gives you flexibility to optimize your TikTok campaign for cost-effectiveness and ensures that you’re getting the most bang for your buck.
Gain valuable insights
- TikTok’s analytics platform provides detailed data on the performance of your ads across different placements.
- This information can help you understand what’s working and what’s not, allowing you to refine your targeting and optimize your placements for even better results.
Types of TikTok Ad Placements
There are two primary placements available through TikTok Ads Manager include:
Automatic Placement
Automatic Placement utilizes all available placements to provide the best results for your ad.
In this mode, the ad system can explore and learn from a wide audience scope and distribute your ads across various applications. Therefore, we recommend this placement type for most advertisers, especially new advertisers.
During ad delivery, the algorithm uses intelligent calculations to:
- Focus on the likelihood of placing your ad within your selected placements based on a relatively low actual bid. The cost you see is the optimal choice provided by the system, considering:
- Active users
- Competition environment
- Your bid and budget
- Provide the best combination of ad placements across TikTok’s app portfolio. This allows you to spend less time fine-tuning ad placements and more time focusing on your business.
Note: TikTok’s delivery system aims to achieve the most targeted results with the overall minimum average delivery costs, not based on the specific minimum average costs of each placement.
Select Placement
Select Placement enables you to manually choose the apps on which you want to deliver your ads. This placement types provide 3 options:
- TikTok: Following Feed, For You Feed, Profile Feed, ads in Shopping Center, Search ads, and others.
- Global App Bundle: Various ad formats on Non-TikTok apps.
- Pangle: Your ad will be displayed in the ad network of ByteDance.
If you use this method, we recommend selecting multiple placements (more than one app) to provide TikTok’s system with flexibility to deliver your ads and maximize results.
However, while we suggest running ads across all placement options to maximize potential reach, you have the flexibility to choose your preferred placement type when creating an ad group.
A few things you need to remember:
- The placement setting cannot be altered after an ad group is created.
- Not all placements may be available. Because their availability depends on the ad type, targeting, ad creation, and country of delivery. For the latest information on available placements, refer to Placements and Available Locations.
How do you choose the right Ad Placements?
Choosing the right ad placements is crucial for the success of your advertising campaign. Here are some steps to help you choose the right ad placements on TikTok:
Step 1: Understand Your Audience
- Identify your target audience and understand their behavior on TikTok.
- Consider factors like age, interests, location, and device usage patterns.
Step 2: Set Clear Campaign Goals
- Define specific and measurable goals for your campaign, such as brand awareness, engagement, conversions, or app installs.
- When you know what you want to achieve, you can make informed choices about ad creatives, placements, targeting, and budget allocation.
Step 3: Review Available Placements
- Each ad placement may attract a different audience or serve a specific purpose.
- You should select TikTok Ad Placements that align with your campaign goals and maximize the exposure of your ads.
- Furthermore, you should review carefully whether your targeted audience is included in the countries you are directing your ads to. If not, you can use a TikTok Agency account to target an unlimited audience.
Step 4: Consider the Nature of Your Content
- Align the nature of your advertising content with the most suitable ad placement. For example, if you have visually engaging content, In-Feed Ads or Branded Effects might be appropriate.
Step 5: Budget Allocation
- Distribute your advertising budget across different placements based on your campaign goals and priorities.
- Some placements may be more expensive than others, so consider the potential reach and impact.
Step 6: Test and Analyze
- Run small-scale tests initially to evaluate the performance of different ad placements.
- Use TikTok’s analytics tools to track key metrics such as impressions, clicks, engagement, and conversions.
Step 7: Optimize Based on Results
- Analyze the performance data and optimize your ad placements based on what works best for your TikTok campaign objectives.
- Adjust your budget allocation and bid strategy based on your ad formats and ad cost for the optimal results
>>> Explore more: How To Optimize TikTok Ads: Guideline From TikTok Agency
Step 8: Utilize Automatic Placement
- Consider using TikTok’s automatic placement option, allowing the platform to optimize your ad delivery across various placements based on performance data.
Step 9: Stay Updated
- Stay informed about updates and new ad placements introduced by TikTok.
- The advertising landscape on the platform may evolve, and new opportunities may arise.
Remember that the best placement for your ad depends on your campaign goals, target audience, budget, and ad format. Regularly monitor and adjust your strategy to ensure optimal performance.
Overall
Remember, on TikTok, your ad is more than just a message; it’s an invitation to join the party. So, let’s choose TikTok Ad Placements wisely, tailor your approach to your goals, and get ready to witness the magic of targeted engagement unfold. With the right strategy, your ad will be the viral hit your brand needs to conquer the TikTok universe.
