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Learn how to capture the attention of your target audience with TikTok search ads, which appear in front of users actively searching for topics or keywords.
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For decades, search has been synonymous with Google. But younger generations are increasingly turning to social media to look for everything from recipes to products, with around 64% of Gen Z using TikTok as a search engine.
Learn more about TikTok search ads and how they can benefit your business—especially if you want to appeal to younger customers.
TikTok search ads are targeted sponsored posts that appear for users actively searching for specific topics or keywords. This type of TikTok ad—which can be a video or image carousel—appears in search results alongside organic content. To differentiate from organic content, TikTok search ads display the word “Sponsored” in the bottom left corner.
As an advertiser, you select which searches will prompt TikTok to display your ads. Here’s an example of a video ad that shows up as the first result in a search for Blundstone:
Another ad type you might see in TikTok search is a product shopping ad, featuring a product image from TikTok Shop and a link to its product detail page (PDP). For example, if a user types “perfume,” they may see ads from the fragrance brand BellaVita Luxury.
Brands can target specific keywords for TikTok and Google search ads, but the two platforms differ in several ways:
TikTok boasts one of the most engaged user bases among social media platforms, with an average engagement rate of 4.86%, according to Buffer. While there are several TikTok marketing strategies—like producing organic content and partnering with influencers— that can help you break through on TikTok, here are a few reasons your brand should also consider TikTok search ads:
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Here are TikTok search ads’ core components:
TikTok’s search advertising functions with keyword targeting. A brand representative selects specific keywords, topics, or phrases that relate to its product or company. When a user searches these keywords or phrases, the company’s ads can appear in their search results.
You can add, remove, or edit keywords while the ads are running to strengthen your campaigns. You can also manually enter or bulk upload keywords, or use keyword suggestions.
TikTok organizes its keyword suggestions by monthly search volume. For example, some of TikTok’s suggested keywords for “card game” are “card games” (9,000), “card games for 2” (2,000), and “card games for couples” (1,000).
Jewelry brand Mejuri used TikTok search ads, a previously untapped market for the company, to capture audiences who were already interested in purchasing jewelry. Merjuri achieved this by using both branded and non-branded keywords.
Brands participate in keyword bidding, setting budgets for keywords and ad groups (collections of ads that share common goals) to compete for ad placement. The platform ranks ads based on the amount a brand bids and the relevance of each ad to a user. Higher bids can help you reach more people. TikTok offers two bidding strategies:
For best results, TikTok recommends a budget-to-bid ratio of 20:1, which refers to the ratio of the money you allocate to your campaign to the bid set for each ad impression.
TikTok designed its algorithm to deliver personalized content to each user, so even though you select your keywords and topics, the algorithm still determines where they appear. TikTok ranks content by performance metrics, user engagement, captions and hashtags, content diversity, and device and account settings.
If this is your first time creating a TikTok ad, set up a TikTok Ads Manager account and add your payment information. Then, follow these steps to create a TikTok search ad:
When you open TikTok Ads Manager for the first time, you may see a streamlined version of the campaign creation interface. If so, click the “Switch to full version” button.
From there, you can create a campaign at any time by navigating to “Create campaign” (under “Getting started” on the left side menu bar) or by navigating to “Campaigns” in the top menu bar and selecting “+ Campaign” on the top left.
Now it’s time to select an objective from one of three main categories, and to refine your goals. You can hover over each objective to learn more.
The two objectives that support search ads are traffic (under “Consideration”) and lead generation (under “Conversion”).
Select the objective that best aligns with your goals, then select “Search campaign.” Select “Continue.”
In this step, you’ll set parameters for your campaign.
Create a unique name for your campaigns. The “Template” button lets you create naming conventions for future campaigns and includes fields for ad location, timing, audience, and bid strategy.
Choose your optimization location to decide whether to send traffic to your website or your TikTok Shop. Under “Optimization goal,” you can choose to deliver ads to the people most likely to click on them or to the people most likely to land on your website.
Select your bidding system. In this example, it’s set to cost-per-click. You can also set a cost cap here.
Each keyword can include up to 80 characters, and you can upload or manually enter them, or use the “Discover keywords” feature. If you choose discovery, you’ll type in a product, service, or brand and then receive a list of keywords and their approximate monthly search volumes. You can automate keywords so that the system generates more based on the ones in your ad.
TikTok recommends using at least 20 keywords in each ad group to ensure that they are “bundled thematically to fit with the ad creative” that users will see in their search results.
Placements indicate where your ads will appear. For search ads, you want your placements to include TikTok search results. Open the “Advanced settings” menu to control whether users can comment on, download, or share your ad.
You can get specific about your target audience. Pick demographics (location, age, gender, languages, spending power, and household income), audience to include or exclude, and device (operating system, OS version, device model, connection type, carriers, and internet service provider).
Choose a daily or lifetime budget for your campaign. You can also set when your campaign will start and which days and times it should run.
In this step, you’ll add the following information:
Optimize performance and search by including keywords in video titles and captions. You can also use a mix of video and image carousel assets in ad groups.
Once you’ve set your creative, publish your ad group, and TikTok will algorithmically share your posts with the best-matched users based on your target keywords.
Once your TikTok search ad campaign is live, use TikTok Ads Manager to track its performance by analyzing impressions, clicks, and traffic. Are you seeing increases in site traffic or higher sales? These are indications that your TikTok search ads are working.
On the flipside, low ad performance can indicate it’s time to deactivate a particular keyword or creative asset or experiment with a new keyword.
After a user inputs a search query, TikTok search ads appear in their search results. The ads may appear in a section at the top of the search results marked as “Sponsored.”
Yes. TikTok launched search ads in September 2024, building on the 2023 toggle function for search ads. TikTok search ads let companies show targeted sponsored posts to users searching for relevant topics or keywords.
TikTok serves both in-feed ads and search ads based on your in-app activity and demographic information, such as your age and location.
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