TikTok has been pitching its advertising wares to brands of all sizes since it released its ad offering out of beta in June.
But the question of what ad products are worthwhile (and affordable) largely depends on whether you’re a multi-national CPG brand or a small business. And despite recent efforts to court small and medium-size accounts, TikTok’s current ad solutions are more tailored to big brands looking for a splashy takeover than a local restaurant aiming to draw in new customers.
In a presentation at the IAB Brand Disruption Summit last month, TikTok’s North America product strategy lead Gabriel Nicolau walked through the company’s eight marketing products, including its six ad solutions.
Nicolau listed just one of those six ad options, auction-based in-feed video ads, as a fit for small and medium-sized businesses.
The remaining five — its “Brand Takeover,” “TopView,” “Branded Effect,” “Branded Hashtag Challenge,” and reserved buys for in-feed ads — were all listed as options for “large brands.”
TikTok’s other two marketing tools, the company’s Creator Marketplace and its “Business Accounts” feature, were available to companies of all sizes.
“For in-feed video bought through our self-serve platform, the overall ad format is the same and great for SMBs,” Nicolau told IAB summit attendees. “The main difference is that it focuses [on] driving to an external landing page including app downloads. Brands are also able to add additional layers of targeting and set specific advertising objectives and goals to run their creatives so that our auction system will optimize it accordingly.”
Here’s a full breakdown of all the different marketing solutions TikTok has on offer and which types of brands they’re tailored for, according to Nicolau:
A “Brand Takeover” on TikTok allows a company to display a video ad (sound off) on the first screen that a user sees when opening the app, driving users to an internal or external landing page. The ad length is restricted to three seconds for a static image and three to five seconds for a video.
