TikTok Spark Ads

This article will explain what are Spark Ads, the benefits, and teach you how to launch them through Perpetua to boost your products online.

Valerie Choi avatar
Written by Valerie Choi
Updated over a week ago

Once your influencer campaign is live, the next recommended step in your marketing strategy is to launch Spark Ads. Spark Ads is TikTok’s latest feature, where brands boost organic TikTok posts that are trending into Ads. But let's dive in a little more...

What are Spark Ads?

Spark Ads by TikTok are a native ad format designed to help brands leverage and boost organic TikTok posts that are trending into Ads. They are displayed between content in the For You Page (FYP), labeled as “Sponsored” and will include a CTA to a landing page of your choice.

Brands have two options when publishing ads. The first is using their own TikTok account's content, and the other is through Influencer Campaigns/Collaborations where you can obtain permission from the creator to boost their content.

What makes these ads so unique is their targeting capabilities. Brands can specify the age, location, and interests of the audience they want to target, and TikTok will serve the Spark Ad accordingly. Hence, Spark Ads are super effective in helping attract new audiences and re-engage existing followers, drive brand awareness, and increase engagement and conversion rates. Ultimately, it's a strategic ad option that brands should highly consider launching in order to achieve their marketing goals!

What are the Benefits of Spark Ads?

Spark Ads allows brands to unlock a new way to maximize their investment in content produced through Perpetua. Brands are able to amplify top performing content to their target demographic on TikTok in a unique native ad format which results in driving external traffic to your PDPs. Showing up where consumers are already engaged ensures your brand stands out and contributes to your full-funnel strategy.

Other key value adds of including Spark Ads in your marketing strategy:

  1. Large and Engaged User Base: TikTok has over 1 billion active users, with a significant portion of them being within a younger demographic. This presents a unique opportunity for businesses to reach a large and engaged audience through Spark Ads.

  2. Cost-Effective Solution: Compared to other social media platforms, TikTok Spark Ads are relatively cost-effective. This makes it an excellent opportunity to maximize every dollar spent on advertising.

  3. Creative Flexibility: TikTok Spark Ads allow for creative flexibility, meaning that you can create unique, engaging ads that stand out from the competition. With a variety of ad formats available, including in-feed videos, branded effects, and sponsored hashtags, you can experiment with different approaches to see what resonates with your target audience.

  4. Targeting Options: TikTok's targeting options allow you to reach a specific audience based on factors such as age, gender, interests, hashtag interactions, and location. This granular level of targeting paired with your ads are shown to the right people.

  5. Ad Performance Analytics: TikTok Spark Ads provide comprehensive performance analytics, allowing you to track and measure the success of your campaigns. This data can help you optimize your ad strategies, refine your targeting, and improve your ROI over time. In your Perpetua dashboard you’re able to see CTR, CPC, ATC, and DPV to name a few.

Overall, TikTok Spark Ads offer a unique and exciting opportunity for businesses to reach a large and engaged audience with creative and cost-effective advertising campaigns. Thus, once your campaign video content is live, the next recommended step is to boost it via Spark Ads!

How to Launch a Spark Ad?

You can quickly and easily launch Spark Ads through the Perpetua app. Here are the step by step instructions:

Step 1: Open your influencer dashboard. This is where all of your influencer content lives, where you launch goals from, and where you see your metrics.

Step 2: Open the ‘Content’ tab at the bottom. This tab showcases all the live content on TikTok and presents metrics like Views, Shares, and Comments.

Step 3: Click the thumbnail of the video you want to spark and then click the purple ‘Promote’ button.

Step 4: Congrats! You made it to the Spark Ads Dashboard 🥳

Step 5: Your first task is to give your spark ad a name. Good names are usually the brand name, the creator’s handle, and the product name. An example would be ‘Brand Name - @kaidathegsd - Product Name’.

Step 6: Fill in your CTA under the creative text field (ex: shop now, click here, etc), as well as your daily budget on the right hand side. Don’t forget to tell your creative strategist the end date of your Spark campaign, so we can pause it!

Step 7: This is where it gets fun! Time to select your location, age range, gender, interests, and any specific hashtags that your target demographic fits into. Here are some helpful tips below:

  • Location: Most brands that run Spark Ads through Perpetua select at the country level they’re in. For example, if your attribution links are for amazon.com, you’d want to keep it pretty specific to the US. If you’re using amazon.ca, you should be targeting Canadians.

  • Gender: Not limited to choosing only one, feel free to choose unspecified or all genders.

  • Age Range: Feel free to choose as many as you want! When selecting the filter “13-17”, your ad will be delayed in going live as it does go through a longer moderation process since it’s advertising to children. Most brands tend to opt-out of this age group as they tend to have smaller purchasing power.

    Best practice: limit yourself to 2-3 age groups so you don’t get too broad.

  • Interests: Define what kind of content your targets are interested in. You’ll notice that every drop-down title has more drop-downs inside, which gives you a plethora of different interests to target. Your limits are endless!

    When selecting interests, it’s best to go broad with any interests that you believe your ideal customer would be interacting with on TikTok. TikTok’s algorithm when serving ads is quite advanced based on the pure amount of user data they have. If your audience is broad and the algorithm notices your Cost-per-Click (CPC) is lowest and Click-Through-Rate (CTR) is highest within a certain interest, it will push more ads out to that interest group and less to the others selected. It’s constantly learning and evolving.

  • Hashtags: Target users who have viewed videos tagged with specific hashtags. Type in your hashtags without the pound button, and you’ll see pre-set hashtags come up! You’re not limited to selecting just one.

Once you’ve finished filling out the targeting form, your Spark Ads are ready to go live! Scroll all the way back up and click the Launch button to send it off.

Happy Sparking! 🚀

How-To Video

If you prefer a video tutorial walking you through how to launch a Spark Ad, please click here.


Article last updated March 9, 2023. If you find this information to be out of date, please contact hello@perpetua.io.

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