Every social media platform eventually turns to advertising to generate revenue and TikTok is no different. The 15-second video platform has been wildly successful in just a few years of existence with more than 500 million users, and it’s now considered more popular than both Twitter and Snapchat. TikTok is still relatively new to paid advertising and therefore it doesn’t have all the features and tools that many of the other paid social options now have, but it also doesn’t have the overcrowded feel of its competitors either.

TikTok users will notice many of the ads they are currently being served are from big-name companies like Nike, Apple and GrubHub, as large corporations are already using TikTok Ads to market their brands and products to new audiences as 66 percent of the platform’s users are under 30. Even though most ads on the platform currently belong to household name brands with a lack of small-business marketing, there is certainly an opportunity for smaller businesses to use TikTok to their advantage and meet their marketing needs.

Unlike other paid social media advertising platforms, TikTok Ads does require a minimum investment of $500 to create a campaign, which isn’t something the competition requires. Because of the infancy of the ads platform, it’s a little more of a process than marketers are used to in setting up a new account, and it can take up to 48 hours from the time a new account form is submitted to when it’s created.

Within the TikTok Ads dashboard, the setup is rather straightforward with the option to choose a Traffic, Conversions or App Install objective.

From there, the audience and targeting features are similar to those of other social media advertising platforms, just not as robust at this point. From an audience perspective, TikTok allows you to select the standard targeting fields as well as the ability to upload custom audience lists.

The budget for the campaign can be controlled at an overall or daily level. However, there is a $50 per day spend requirement for campaigns. TikTok offers standard and accelerated pacing and optimization goals for conversion, click or impression. Conversion tracking can be set up for app installs and TikTok has their own pixel, which can be installed and used to collect data on your landing page. Both video and images can be used for ads and the Video Creation Kit tool helps assist the user in building their desired ad.

Because of the campaign and daily minimums for TikTok Ads, marketing budget issues could continue to limit the amount of companies willing to test on the platform. But for those smaller businesses who do decide to see what kind of results TikTok Ads can offer them, any paid social media marketer familiar with creating campaigns on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest or Snapchat will find it easy to navigate TikTok Ads and successfully build campaigns.

TikTok Ads might not have the features and capabilities of those other platforms yet, but they also don’t have the increased costs and KPIs either from an oversaturated market. As one of the most downloaded apps in the world, TikTok isn’t going anywhere anytime soon, and TikTok Ads will only continue to improve and expand as a result.

TikTok Ads might not have the features and capabilities of those other platforms yet, but they also don’t have the increased costs and KPIs either from an oversaturated market. As one of the most downloaded apps in the world, TikTok isn’t going anywhere anytime soon, and TikTok Ads will only continue to improve and expand as a result.