Short-form video advertising on TikTok
Rough top-line math using platform averages. Real campaigns will vary with targeting, creative, and industry — see the by-industry table below for refined figures.
Side-by-side cost and use-case breakdowns against the most common alternatives.
Per-industry estimates derived by scaling TikTok Ads's baseline costs by each industry's multiplier relative to the cross-industry average. Click any industry to see the full side-by-side comparison.
Estimates derived from baseline platform cost × (industry metric ÷ cross-industry average). For exact figures from your account, run a search query report or campaign benchmark export.
The auction, the creative, the budget floor — the three things you actually need to know before picking a platform.
TikTok Ads runs on CPM ($8–12 typical, higher for premium placements like TopView). CPC is available but the platform's optimization heavily favors CPM-bid campaigns. Auction density is lower than Meta but growing quickly; creative quality dominates.
9:16 vertical video (1080×1920), 9-60s (best performance 15-30s), native-feeling — polished ads underperform UGC-style creative here by 2-3x. Sound-on is standard. Captions optional but boost completion.
$500/day ($15K/month) is the practical floor for the Traffic and Conversion objectives to exit learning phase in a reasonable window. Smaller budgets work for Awareness and Video View goals.
Free, no-signup tools to model your TikTok Ads campaigns.