It works for consumer products with visual demonstration, an impulse price point and a young-skewing audience. It generally does not work for enterprise B2B, high-ticket considered purchases or anything that needs a long explanation. If that is you, we will point you at Google and Meta and keep the retainer conversation short.
On TikTok the first second is the entire auction. People scroll past anything that announces itself as advertising, and the platform’s ranking reflects that within hours rather than weeks.
Vertical, sound-on, filmed on a phone, a person talking to camera, a hook in the first second. Polished brand films consistently underperform a well-made phone video from a real person. This is uncomfortable for brands with strong visual guidelines, and it is the most reliable finding on the platform.
Creative fatigue arrives faster on TikTok than anywhere else. An account running three videos a month will stall. The planning question is not which concept to run but how many you can produce sustainably, and if the answer is very few, the channel is not ready for your budget.
Spark Ads run an organic post as an ad, keeping the likes, comments and the creator’s handle. They perform better than the same video uploaded cleanly because they look like what they are. It requires an authorisation code from the creator and a usage agreement that actually covers paid amplification — which has to be sorted before the shoot, not after the video does well.
A TikTok ad’s comment section is visible and it converts or kills. Moderating it, answering objections in it and pinning the right reply is real work with a measurable effect, and almost no agency does it.
Less to say here than on Meta or Google, because on TikTok the account is genuinely less of the job than the creative.
TikTok’s server-side events matter for the same reasons Meta’s do. Attribution is also more generous than reality — a large share of claimed conversions are view-through. Judge the channel on whether total revenue moves when you turn spend up, not on what the dashboard claims.
Same principle as Meta: consolidate, give each ad group enough conversions, and stop editing. TikTok’s learning is if anything less forgiving of interference.
In markets with TikTok Shop, the in-app purchase path changes the economics substantially and brings its own fee structure and fulfilment requirements. It is a commerce decision before it is a media one, and we will flag it rather than run ads around a gap.
We would rather turn down the work than take a retainer for a channel that cannot pay you back. These are the situations where we say no.
Enterprise software, commercial equipment, professional services with a long procurement cycle. Your buyer may well be on TikTok in the evening; they are not there to evaluate vendors. The money belongs in search.
If creative production is a quarterly project rather than a monthly rhythm, TikTok will burn through what you have and then quietly stop working. Better to put the budget into Meta, where creative lasts longer, until production is solved.
Health, finance and anything needing careful qualification sits badly with a format built on fast, informal, personality-led claims. It can be done and it is slow and frequently not worth it relative to other channels.
A real audit of your live campaigns — structure, tracking, creative and where the budget is leaking. Free, no obligation, and yours to keep even if you never work with us.
You can, and it usually fails. Meta creative is often square, frequently sound-off, and visibly produced. TikTok's ranking is unusually sensitive to that. Reusing is a reasonable first test; it is not a plan.
We write concepts, hooks and scripts, and we can brief and manage creators. Full production is scoped separately. If you have no route to a steady supply of video, we will tell you that is the blocker before you spend anything.
More than for Meta, and the specific number depends on spend. Plan for a continuous monthly output rather than a batch. We size it properly in the audit.
CPMs are often lower and conversion rates often lower too, so the landed cost per acquisition can go either way. Treat cheap reach as a reason to test, not as a reason to expect a cheaper customer.
They frequently are. A large share of TikTok's reported conversions are view-through. Run a proper spend-up test and watch total revenue rather than the platform's own claim.
Yes, and we do it often. It is a small retainer to lose and a bad reputation to earn.
Including an honest answer on whether TikTok deserves your budget at all.