The TikTok Ads Targeting Guide
Tik Tok ads targeting allows users to direct their adverts towards specific groups. This will allow you to fine-tune your advert’s reach and target groups with specific interests, characteristics, and behaviors online. You can define this targeting during the ad group creation process. Let’s take a closer look at how this works…
How does specific targeting work?
The Tik Tok Ads Manager supports the following criteria for group-specific targeting:
Audience |
Include |
Create a Lookalike or Custom Audience (Customer file, Engagement, App Activity, Website Traffic) |
Demographics |
Exclude |
Exclude Lookalike or Custom Audiences |
Gender |
Male, Female | |
Age |
13–17, 18–24, 25–34, 35–44, 45–54, 55+ | |
Location |
Country/Region > State/Province Select a Designated Marketing Area (DMA) when targeting the United States |
|
Language |
Delivery to users based on app language | |
Interest |
Target users based on the videos they’re interested in | |
Behavior |
Target users based on how they’ve interacted with videos
Target users based on how they’ve interacted with creators |
|
Device |
Connection Type |
Wifi, 2G, 3G, 4G |
Operating System |
iOS and Android | |
Operation System Version |
Deliver ads to users based on software version. E.g. iOS 10.0 or above, Android 4.0 or above | |
Device Model |
Deliver ads to users based on user’s device model | |
Device Price |
Deliver ads to users based on device pricing, ranging from no limit to $1000+ | |
Carrier |
Deliver ads to users based on mobile phone carriers |
Interest Targeting
A user’s interest is determined by the way they behave relating to different content types. This content may include videos, ads, articles, pages and so on.
How does Interest Targeting work?
Tik Tok Ads measures how users interact with this content through views, clicks, downloads, and other specific actions. When a user’s interaction with a particular category of interest is high, for example, ‘gaming’ – (perhaps they regularly watch gaming videos or click on gaming ads), their profile will be associated with this interest for future advertising purposes.
Tik Tok Ads allows you to select ‘interest categories’ under the targeting module. When creating an ad group, your advert will target specific users whose profiles match your particular interest category.
Fine-tuning your adverts to target by interest can dramatically improve your ad delivery accuracy. Let’s take a look at how we can categorize interest targeting in two ways:
Product Characteristics
You can choose the interest you want to target based on product characteristics. For example, if you’re going to promote a Moteefe T-Shirt, you should select ‘Apparel and Accessories’ from the drop-down menu as shown below:
Use Cases:
You can select the interest based on use cases. For example, if you promote a “Moteefe Vacation T-shirt” and think that users who travel may have a particular interest in buying a Moteefe Vacation T-shirt, you can select the interest “Travel”.
For example, when you choose the interests, “Travel”, “Apparel & Accessories” and “Pets”, Tiktok will show your ad to users who are interested in “Travel” or ” Apparel & Accessories ” or “Pets”. Please note that when you select more than one interest, the target audience is users who meet only one individual criterion. So be sure to choose the interest which matches your target group the most.
Behavior Targeting
Behaviour Targeting allows you to deliver ads based on a user’s recent in-app behaviour on TikTok. While interest targeting focuses on a user’s long-term content consumption, behaviour targeting focuses on a user’s recent interactions with content.
1. Video-related Behavior
Tik Tok Ads also allows you to target users who have watched a video to the end, liked, commented, or shared.
Note: The video-related behaviour that we can capture is limited to their engagement (video completion, like, comment, share) with the organic video content in the past 7 or 15 days.
Step-by-Step Video-related targeting
Step 1: Select your desired user behavior and content category:
Step 2: Search for the content Category you want to target:
Step 3: Determine the look-back time, seven days or 15 days:
Creator Following Actions
You can target users who follow certain types of Creators on TikTok or have viewed the homepage of certain kinds of Creators on the platform.
Step-by-Step Tik-Tok Creators
Step 1: Click on Add Behaviors: Creator Interactions
Step 2: Check the box to select your desired interaction type. TikTok provides two kinds of engagements under Creator Following Actions.
Following: You can target users that follow specific types (s) of creators.
Viewed Homepage: You can target users who have viewed the profile pages of creators’ specific type(s) in the last 30 days.
Step 3: Select your desired audience categories:
Differences between Interest Targeting and Behavior Targeting
Behavior Targeting |
Interest Targeting |
|
Feature Logic |
Based on user behavior | Predicted through machine learning based on long-term past behavior and critical indicators |
Time Frame |
Recent (7/15 days) | Remote |
User Behaviour |
Tracked Behaviour | General Behaviour |
Content-Type |
Organic Content | Organic and Paid Content |
Advertiser Type |
Hands-on | Hands-off |