How to Run TikTok Ads: From a New Ads Manager Account to Your First Campaign

The eight steps

1. 1

   Create the Ads Manager login

   Sign up on the Advertising on TikTok page with an email address or phone number and a password, accept the terms, and enter the verification code TikTok sends.

2. 2

   Fill in the advertiser account — carefully

   Country or region, industry, legal business name, time zone, phone number and currency. TikTok says a business name that does not match the real business may stop the account being approved, and that time zone, region, business name and currency cannot be edited once the account exists — changing them later means contacting support.

3. 3

   Add billing and a payment method

   What is required depends on the country: billing address, tax information and possibly Business Verification. Choose a payment method from the ones supported in your region, then Go to Ads Manager.

4. 4

   Wait for account approval

   The account is submitted for review automatically. You can build campaigns in the meantime, but ads will not run until it is approved; TikTok says most reviews take under 24 hours. Status is under Account Settings → Account Info.

5. 5

   Pick the campaign objective

   Sales (TikTok Shop, website conversion), Lead generation (website form, Instant Form), or awareness objectives — Traffic, Video views, Community interaction. The new-advertiser flow recommends one from your business details; Switch to full options exits the guided mode.

6. 6

   Set up the ad group

   Placements, audience, budget and schedule, optimisation goal and bid all live here. Budget must exceed $20 a day per ad group (above $50 a day if set on the campaign); a lifetime ad-group budget is $20 multiplied by every scheduled day.

7. 7

   Build the ad

   Choose an identity, a format (single video, Carousel, or a Spark Ad from a post), upload media that meets spec, pick a thumbnail, then display name, text, CTA, profile image and destination URL. Add the Pixel or tracking parameters before you publish, not after — TikTok's reservation spec does not allow URL edits once an ad is reviewed.

8. 8

   Publish and leave it alone

   The ad goes into review. Once live, TikTok says volatility typically starts to decline after about 25 campaign results or 7 days, and that pausing, editing or an unreasonable budget keeps a campaign stuck in learning. Judge nothing before the week is out.

Step 1–4: the TikTok Ads Manager account

The sign-up is ordinary; the advertiser account form is not. TikTok's setup FAQ says you will not be able to edit the time zone, region, business name and currency of an ad account once it is created. Reporting and scheduling run on that time zone, and every invoice is in that currency, so a European business that picks USD and Pacific time on autopilot is stuck with reports that roll over at 9 a.m. Set them for where the money and the team are.

The legal business name must match the actual business; TikTok warns a mismatch may mean the account is not approved and makes other TikTok for Business tools harder to access. Billing requirements then follow the country: address, tax information and, where asked, Business Verification. Approval is automatic to request and usually under 24 hours to receive. You can build the campaign while waiting; it simply will not deliver until the account clears.

Step 5–6: objective and ad group

TikTok's structure is three levels. The campaign carries the objective and, optionally, a budget. The ad group carries everything that decides delivery: placements, audience, budget and schedule, optimisation goal and bid. Ads sit inside it, up to 50 on auction. Pick the objective by what you can measure, because each one defaults to an optimisation goal and a bidding method:

The bidding methods behind that column are four: CPM, where you bid per thousand impressions; oCPM, the same unit but delivered to people likely to act, and the default for conversions and app installs; CPV, paid when a 6-second view or an interaction happens first; and CPC, per click. A first campaign rarely needs to touch them — the objective picks the right one.

Budget: the minimums and TikTok's own guidance

The floor is above $50 a day per campaign and above $20 a day per ad group; a lifetime ad-group budget must be at least $20 times every scheduled day, so 31 days is $620. The floor is not the guidance, though. TikTok's budget best-practice page sets the number by what you are optimising for:

• Leave the campaign budget open at first and set a daily budget on the ad group — TikTok's own best-practice page says to prefer daily over lifetime for ad groups.
• First conversion campaign with no CPA history: TikTok's floor is $200 for a deep event such as purchase or an install, $100 for a shallow event such as page view or a non-conversion goal. With history: 10× your CPA for deep events, 20× for installs, 50× for shallow events.
• During the learning phase, raise budget by no more than 40% per change; after it, no more than 30%, and never more often than every two days. For a conversion campaign, change nothing — targeting, bid or budget — until learning is over.
• You cannot switch an ad group between daily and lifetime budget once it is live. When a budget runs out, delivery pauses on its own and resumes only if you raise it or extend the schedule.

What that budget buys — the going CPM, CPC and CPA with sources — is in our TikTok ads cost guide, and whether your first week's numbers are normal is in the benchmarks guide.

Step 7–8: the ad, the review and the first week

At the ad level you choose an identity, a format and media. Single video is the default; Carousel runs images; and a Spark Ad uses a post that already exists, which for a first campaign is often the better creative because it has already been tested on real viewers for free — our Spark Ads guide covers the authorization. Uploaded video needs to meet spec: 9:16 at 540×960 or larger, up to 10 minutes, 500 MB or less, bitrate at least 516 kbps. Then display name, text, CTA from TikTok's fixed list, profile image, and the destination URL with the Pixel or UTM parameters attached. The ad name is internal, up to 512 characters, and never shown.

Publishing submits the ad for review; the status shows in Ads Manager. Then comes the part people get wrong. TikTok says volatility typically starts to decline after about 25 campaign results or 7 days, and that pausing, editing settings that retrigger learning, or setting unreasonable budgets and creative volumes can keep a campaign from ever leaving the learning phase. The instinct on day two — the CPM looks high, the CTR looks low, change something — is exactly what resets the clock. For a conversion campaign, TikTok's guidance is to make no targeting, bid or budget changes until learning is over, and to wait at least two days between later changes.

After the week, read cost per result first, then conversion rate on clicks, then CTR (destination), then CPM — in that order, because each one explains the next. If the result cost is acceptable, the rest is detail. If it is not, the order tells you whether the landing page, the creative or the audience is the thing to change, and you change one.