TikTok offers several ad formats, and the right choice depends on your objective, your budget, and your creative capabilities.

In-Feed ads are the most commonly used format. These are full-screen vertical video ads that appear in the For You feed between organic content. They look and feel like native TikTok content, which is both their greatest strength and their greatest creative challenge. If an In-Feed ad looks like an advertisement rather than a TikTok video, users will scroll past it almost instantly. The best performing In-Feed ads are indistinguishable from organic content in their style and energy, even as they carry a clear commercial message.

TopView ads appear when users first open the TikTok app, taking over the full screen for up to 60 seconds before transitioning to an In-Feed ad. They generate enormous reach and are appropriate for brand awareness campaigns where maximum visibility is the priority. They are also considerably more expensive than In-Feed placements.

Branded Hashtag Challenges invite users to create their own content around a branded theme or challenge. When they work, they work spectacularly, generating millions of pieces of user-generated content and significant earned media. They require substantial creative ambition and budget, and they are not suitable for every business or every campaign goal.

Branded Effects allow businesses to create custom filters, stickers, and augmented reality effects that TikTok users can apply to their own videos. Again, when executed well these can generate significant organic reach, but they require creative investment to develop.

Spark Ads are one of the most important formats for businesses running TikTok advertising in 2026. They allow you to put paid promotion behind existing organic TikTok content, either from your own account or (with permission) from creator accounts. This is significant because it combines the authenticity and credibility of organic content with the reach and targeting of paid advertising. Spark Ads consistently outperform standard In-Feed ads in both engagement rate and conversion rate.

TikTok Audience Targeting and Why It Works Differently

TikTok’s targeting options include the demographic and interest-based targeting you would expect: age, gender, location, language, interests, and device type. You can also build custom audiences from your own customer data, your website visitors via the TikTok Pixel, or people who have engaged with your TikTok content.

But here is the important thing to understand about TikTok targeting: the algorithm itself does a significant amount of the targeting work for you. If your creative is genuinely good and your campaign objective is correctly set, TikTok’s algorithm will find the right audience for your content, even within fairly broad targeting parameters. This is why over-narrowing your targeting on TikTok often produces worse results than on Meta. Giving the algorithm room to find your best audience tends to outperform trying to define that audience too precisely from the outset.

This does not mean you should ignore targeting entirely. Location targeting is important for businesses serving specific geographic areas. Age and gender targeting is appropriate when your product has a clearly defined demographic fit. And custom audiences built from your website visitors or customer lists are worth using for retargeting campaigns. But the creative is far more important than the targeting on TikTok, and this is a meaningful shift from how most businesses are used to thinking about paid social.

What Makes TikTok Creative Different From Everything Else

This is the section of this guide that matters most, and it is the area where most businesses get TikTok advertising wrong. TikTok creative is not Facebook creative shot vertically. It is not a repurposed Instagram Reel. It is not a polished brand video with a logo animation at the end. It is something genuinely different, and understanding that difference is the starting point for making TikTok ads work.

TikTok users have an exceptionally well-developed sense of what is native to the platform and what is not. They can identify an ad that was not made for TikTok within a fraction of a second, and they scroll past it with equal speed. The creative that performs on TikTok feels like it was made by someone who actually uses TikTok. It uses the platform’s native language: direct address to camera, genuine personality, fast cuts, trending audio where appropriate, captions on screen, and a hook in the first two seconds that gives viewers a compelling reason to keep watching.

The hook is arguably the single most important element of any TikTok ad. You have roughly two seconds before a significant proportion of viewers have decided whether to keep watching or scroll. That hook needs to be visual, verbal, or ideally both. It should either pose an interesting question, make a bold statement, show something unexpected, or create immediate curiosity. Weak openings are the single most common reason TikTok ads fail.

Authenticity outperforms polish on TikTok consistently. A genuine product demonstration filmed on a phone by someone who clearly knows and believes in the product will almost always outperform a highly produced advertisement on this platform. This is uncomfortable for brands that are used to controlling every aspect of their creative output, but it is a commercial reality that the data supports consistently.

User-generated content and creator partnerships are particularly powerful on TikTok precisely because of this dynamic. At Delivered Social, we give our clients access to a network of TikTok creators who can produce authentic content for your brand, combining the credibility of real person endorsement with the commercial targeting of paid advertising through Spark Ads.

What TikTok Ads Cost for UK Businesses

TikTok advertising operates on an auction model similar to Meta and Google. You set a budget at either the campaign or ad group level, and TikTok bids on your behalf against other advertisers competing for the same audience.

TikTok’s minimum daily budget at the ad group level is around £20, which is higher than Meta’s minimum. This means TikTok advertising requires a slightly higher floor of investment to generate meaningful data. A daily budget of £20 to £50 during the testing phase allows the algorithm to gather enough data to optimise properly.

Cost per thousand impressions on TikTok in the UK typically ranges from around £5 to £20 depending on the audience and objective. Cost per click varies considerably based on creative quality and relevance, but well-performing In-Feed ads can achieve CPCs comparable to or lower than Meta for the right audiences and products.

The honest picture on TikTok costs is that the platform rewards creative quality more directly than almost any other advertising channel. A genuinely compelling ad will cost you less and reach more people than a mediocre one. This means your investment in creative is just as important as your media budget, and treating the two as separate considerations is a mistake.

At Delivered Social, our TikTok advertising service starts from £399 per month. We handle campaign strategy, audience setup, creative direction, and ongoing management, and we give our clients access to our creator network for businesses that want to combine paid advertising with authentic UGC content.

The Difference Between TikTok Organic and TikTok Paid

Many businesses start on TikTok organically before investing in paid advertising, which is a sensible approach. Building an organic presence on TikTok gives you a content library to work with, helps you understand what resonates with your audience, and gives the algorithm data about your account and your content before you put budget behind it.

The relationship between organic and paid on TikTok is closer than on most other platforms. Organic posts that perform well are strong candidates to be promoted through Spark Ads. Paid campaigns that generate engagement feed back into your organic presence. And a TikTok account with genuine organic content and an active presence will typically see better paid results than one where the account exists solely for advertising.

TikTok’s Promote feature, which is the platform’s simplified boosting tool similar to Facebook’s Boost, is worth understanding but has the same limitations as all platform-native boosting tools. It is quick and accessible but removes most of the targeting and optimisation control that makes paid TikTok advertising genuinely effective. For businesses that want real results rather than inflated view counts, Ads Manager is the right tool.

The Most Common Mistakes Businesses Make With TikTok Ads

Repurposing creative from other platforms without adapting it for TikTok is the single most reliably expensive mistake. A horizontal video with a logo at the start and a polished brand track underneath it will be ignored on TikTok regardless of how much budget is behind it. The creative must be built for the platform.

Ignoring the hook is the second most common failure. Businesses spend time on the middle and end of their TikTok ads and give almost no thought to the first two seconds. On a platform where a significant proportion of viewers make their watch or scroll decision in that window, this is a critical error.

Running a single creative variation without testing is how most businesses conclude that TikTok does not work for them. The platform rewards creative experimentation. Running three to five creative variations simultaneously, comparing performance data, and iterating based on what the algorithm identifies as the best performer is the basic methodology for improving results over time.

Targeting too narrowly removes the algorithmic advantage that makes TikTok distinctive. Setting audience parameters that are too specific prevents the algorithm from finding the full range of people who might respond to your ad.

And measuring TikTok performance using the same metrics and expectations as Google or Meta leads to misleading conclusions. TikTok operates on a different timescale, with a different creative logic, and generates different types of commercial value. Judging it purely on last-click conversions in the first week of a campaign is a setup for disappointment.

Why Working With a TikTok Ads Agency Makes Commercial Sense

TikTok advertising has a steeper creative learning curve than most other paid social channels. The platform’s creative requirements are genuinely different, the algorithm behaves differently, and the measurement framework requires a different way of thinking about success. For businesses that want results without the trial and error of learning all of this from scratch, working with an experienced TikTok ads agency significantly shortens the path to performance.

At Delivered Social, we are a leading UK TikTok advertising agency working with brands across a wide range of sectors. Our TikTok ads service starts from £399 per month and includes campaign strategy, creative direction, audience setup, ongoing management, and access to our network of TikTok creators for businesses that want to combine paid campaigns with authentic UGC content. Whether you want to build a TikTok brand, drive traffic to your website, or grow sales through TikTok Shop, we have the expertise to make it work.

If you would like to talk about what a TikTok advertising strategy could look like for your business, contact us and let’s start that conversation.