The Ultimate TikTok Ads Beginner Guide for 2025

TikTok on the Rise in 2025

Welcome to your ultimate TikTok ads beginner guide. If you are looking to master TikTok marketing for beginners, you are in the right place. Did you know the following facts about the platform

• There are over 1.5 billion active users on TikTok globally.
• The app has been downloaded billions of times, breaking records continuously over recent years.
• Users in over 150 countries have adopted this interactive social media platform.

(We are Social & Hootsuite)

In just a short time, TikTok witnessed rapid growth across the globe. TikTok provides the most opportunities to go viral. It is not an overstatement to say TikTok is rewriting the ways social media works.

However, many businesses have missed the chances or underestimated the power of the platform. There are many myths and doubts around this rising social media network, which leads to the question of whether it is worthy to start investing in a TikTok ads guide and strategy.

In this blog today, let us discuss whether TikTok advertising is the right option for you and get yourself prepared to build a successful campaign. We will walk you through a practical example campaign that can be implemented in 2025 for an interior design brand.

Common Myths About TikTok Marketing

TikTok is only for young adults

TikTok has hit the nail on the head when it comes to engaging with young adults worldwide. According to recent studies, a large portion of TikTok users are under 30 years old.

But even though the app is still overwhelmingly popular among teenagers, the latest figures show a shift away from this trend. The number of adults joining the platform grows significantly year on year. TikTok continues to partner with celebrities and influencers to target people from older generations, making your TikTok advertising guide relevant for all demographics.

TikTok is a complicated platform

Indeed, no. TikTok provides all the tools needed to bring your marketing campaigns to the next level. From targeting, ad creation, insight reports, and ad management tools, TikTok offers a powerful yet simple platform to help businesses build their brand awareness among millions of users across the globe.

If you are already familiar with Facebook Business Manager, you will surely get on board quickly with TikTok.

There are not many themes on TikTok

There is something for everyone on TikTok. Whether your companies operate in SaaS, technology, design, e-commerce, the hospitality industry, or you want to increase visibility for your products and services, there is a place for you on TikTok.

Why You Should Invest in TikTok Advertising

Now that the misconceptions are clear, let us convince you with a few more reasons why it is wise to invest in TikTok advertising in 2025.

Reach diverse audiences on TikTok

While TikTok ads might feel newer than Facebook or Instagram ads, they are an incredible opportunity for companies to build brand awareness. Since many businesses are still figuring out the platform, it is the perfect time for you to get started and become a pioneer.

Whether you are a small business with a limited budget or you want to run a continuous campaign, TikTok ads offer several unique tools to help brands and companies excel.

While there is an exceptionally terrific opportunity to advertise to the Gen Z demographic on TikTok, if your company matches that demographic, you will still be able to reach countless age groups and other specific demographics by advertising on the platform.

Increase brand exposure

Current data shows an impressive user engagement rate, which is genuinely significant from a marketer’s point of view.

In addition, not only celebrities and influencers can drive trends. With TikTok, everyone can participate and become a trend maker. Making video ads based on current trends will increase ad relevancy and the chance to show up on someone’s feed.

Contribute to video marketing efforts

Now you might wonder if you can just do video marketing on Facebook or Instagram. It is true. However, TikTok is solely about videos, which provides better opportunities to connect with audiences through sound and motion.

Besides, recent studies show the increasing trends of visual data and videos in marketing. Take a look at how YouTube grew over the past years or how Facebook and Instagram adapted to this trend by setting up new features for video hosting.

TikTok can be used both as a video content publisher and an advertiser at the same time.

Stay ahead of the social media curve

TikTok will not just stop here. We predict that the platform is going to grow even more throughout 2025. If you are still hesitant, now is the perfect time to get started.

How to Build TikTok Ads Campaigns

In the next section, we will walk you through a practical experiment on TikTok for a hypothetical campaign setup.

Brand example TramDecor

Location Vietnam

Industry Interior design

Campaign objectives Drive more traffic to the landing page where visitors can sign up through a registration form or chat with the sales team to make an order.

The preparation phase

First of all, you need a business account to run ads.

Head to https://ads.tiktok.com/ and click to Create an Ad.

Then fill out your business details.

Once the registration process is completed, you will be redirected to the TikTok Business Center. Here you can access your business account to start your campaign.

At first glance, you might find it similar to Facebook Business Manager but easier to navigate and change the settings. Do not forget to add your billing details in Business Settings.

Click Ads Accounts and on the right side select Open in TikTok Ads Manager.

Once you are in Ads Manager, you will see a navigation menu. It is vital first to understand the functions of each element so that we can continue from here

• Dashboard where you find the summary from your latest campaigns. You can also review demographics information and take away some insights for your next campaigns.
• Campaign where we will go next to set up the advertising campaign.
• Assets store all the Events, Creatives, and Audiences which will support your campaign later. Our advice is to have all of them ready and uploaded here before setting up any campaigns.

Pixel and events setup

Talking about inserting pixels and creating events, TikTok has redesigned its event tracking to make it easier for beginners. No complex setup, no coding knowledge needed, and no requirements to connect with Google Tag Manager. We simply have to insert the pixel to the website, then type in the URL to the landing page in the box provided and wait for them to load. You can click on different elements on the site to create Click Events, then a CSS selector will be automatically inserted in the rule tracking.

It would work best when you have an e-commerce store and you want to create an event where people click the Add to cart button, since it will automatically include all elements with the same CSS selector on all pages.

• Reporting here you can customise your version of the report using drag and drop features.

Now, let us set up your first advertising campaign.

The campaign implementation

Head over to Campaign. Here you will see the list of all campaigns if you have created some.

Similar to Instagram Ad Manager, TikTok advertising platform tools automate the process of creating, delivering, and optimising your ads.

Now, click Create on the left side.

Step 1 Choose campaign objectives

For the objectives of this campaign, we would like to create brand awareness and drive as many visitors to the landing page as possible.

Step 2 Identify target audiences

• Placement Type In addition to TikTok, you can decide whether you want to publish your ads on partner apps or not.

Since our example company does not belong to the entertainment industry, we only proceed and distribute the ads on the TikTok platform.

• Location this targeted region is related to the language you will use in the ad. You can refer to some policies about the ad language here.
• Demographics here you can define some characteristics for your audiences. Another alternative is to create your audiences in Assets beforehand and choose from the list.

Since TramDecor target audiences are shop owners, startup founders, and families, we decided to narrow the age group to 24 plus, location in Vietnam, and interests in Home and Decor.

Step 3 Set Budget and Bid

TikTok Ads currently has two budgeting options daily or lifetime. TikTok sets a minimum budget of 40 EUR per day at the campaign level and 10 EUR per day at the ad group level. This minimum spend is meant to ensure that your ad has enough budget to spend to reach your ad objectives. The minimum budget is quite similar to LinkedIn Advertising Campaigns but higher than Facebook Ads or Google Ads.

However, TikTok ads are still relatively fresh to many marketers. Brands and businesses are still experimenting with the platform. As many advertisers join the platform, the cost will likely stabilise, making it more affordable for small businesses.

Return on investment

Understanding the average spend or return on investment (ROI) is an ongoing learning process. But if you are a small business and want to give TikTok ads a try, do not let the uncertainty scare you off right away. We are here to learn and experiment. Start with a small budget and review the campaign performance after a few days, then adjust based on the results. That is exactly what we simulate for this TramDecor example.

Bidding strategies

Different types of brands will have different bidding strategies. On TikTok, you have the option to select from multiple bidding strategies that can be optimised based on your goals. Below are the two most common bidding strategies

• Standard Bid you will set a specific bid price that you are willing to pay per optimisation goal (clicks, conversions, impressions). However, this strategy has some drawbacks as it is dependent on your competitors. If they bid higher, you will likely lose your place.
• Max Conversion you have no restrictions to your cost per conversion. The only thing you need to do is to set a total campaign budget. TikTok will automatically adjust to maximise the conversions.

The budget we set is equivalent to 10 EUR per day, and the campaign runs in 5 days from 8.00 AM to 7.00 PM, during which there comes the most traffic. We chose to go with Max Conversion since it offers a more stable daily spend, through which we can also calculate the cost and determine our standard bid for the next campaigns.

Step 4 Complete ad assets

With TikTok ads, you can increase the creativity within your team. There are plenty of ad formats you can choose from and test with to figure out the most suitable ones.

Here are a few

• In-Feed video video ads appear in the TikTok newsfeed on the For You page. It is simple to create and is currently the most used format.
• Brand takeover an interactive ad format that will take over the whole screen when the users open the app.
• Hashtag challenge this ad format will encourage users to create their content and participate in the challenges.
• Branded AR content with this format, the company will design stickers and AR content for TikTok users to use in their videos.
• Custom Influencer Package the ad will appear as sponsored content from an influencer account.

We prepared three different videos for In-Feed Ads to introduce the service offerings

• Video 1 Introduce 4 services, with the call to action placed at the end of the video.
• Video 2 Introduce 4 services, however, the call to action is placed within the first 3 seconds of the video.
• Video 3 Client testimonials about the brand, with the call to action placed at the end of the video.

You can add a maximum of 5 text descriptions. The intelligent features will mix the video and the text to create different versions of the ads.

In addition, TikTok has a built-in feature for creating quick and simple videos, which is perfect for a beginner guide approach.

How to Export TikTok Ads to Excel

Once your campaigns are running, tracking performance is vital. Many marketers want to know how to export TikTok ads to Excel for deeper analysis. The platform makes this incredibly simple. Inside the Reporting tab, you can customise your data columns based on the metrics that matter most to your business.

After configuring your report, simply click the export button to download your data directly as a CSV or Excel file. If you prefer automation, you can also connect TikTok ads to Excel using third-party integration tools. Software like Zapier or Supermetrics allows you to pull live data from your TikTok Ads Manager directly into your spreadsheets. This helps our consultants and marketing teams monitor daily spend and conversions without manually downloading reports every single day.

The campaign results

After TikTok approves your ad campaign and begins to run, you can monitor your ad performance in the Dashboard.

Once the campaign ends, head over to Reporting. Use filters within campaign reports to drill down into your data. Learn how your ads are performing based on specific dimensions and metrics. These filters include ad creativity, audience demographics, device type, and placement. As mentioned, you can later export the customised data and insights as an Excel file.

Here are the sample results after this 5-day campaign

What surprises us the most is the number of impressions and clicks. Generating over 121,000 impressions and 2,700 clicks in just five days is the most significant proof for the opportunity to go viral with this platform. The cost per click is also very affordable, landing around 0.02 EUR per click.

Referring to the three video ads we created, it was interesting to see that video 2 gained the most clicks, meaning first impressions are essential to attract and engage the audiences.

A quick data comparison to previous Google Ads and Facebook Ads campaigns

• Budget (5 days) Google Ads 120 EUR, Facebook Ads 30 EUR, TikTok Ads 40 EUR
• Impressions Google Ads 15,266, Facebook Ads 13,106, TikTok Ads 121,714
• Clicks Google Ads 500, Facebook Ads 198, TikTok Ads 2,700
• CTR Google Ads 3.2 percent, Facebook Ads 1.51 percent, TikTok Ads 2.2 percent
• CPC Google Ads 0.20 EUR, Facebook Ads 0.10 EUR, TikTok Ads 0.02 EUR

Google Ads and Facebook Ads are still of high importance and among two of the most efficient advertising methods. However, we cannot deny the potential of TikTok Ads, with the possibility to help your company reach a vast pool of audiences at a highly competitive cost.

Summary

With TikTok Ads, whether you want to drive more visitors to your website, lead them to download your app, or land them at your e-commerce portal, you will always find features that are customised for your own needs. You can reach more audiences and get more engagement which turns into qualified leads.

It is crucial to keep in mind that TikTok evolves fast and is changing every day. Therefore, do not stop learning and experimenting. Try out new ad formats, adjust your budget, and most importantly, have fun with TikTok.

If you need expert guidance to scale your digital marketing efforts in 2025, our consultants are ready to help you succeed. Contact Gaasly today and click Request Quotation to get started.