TikTok minimum spend and your budget

TikTok can be a great channel, but it has higher minimum budgets than most platforms. On a smaller budget, that minimum can take a large share of your money. This guide explains how to tell whether TikTok is right for your campaign.

TikTok's minimums

• Campaign: at least £50 a day.
• Ad group: at least £20 a day.

The campaign budget must be at least as high as the ad group budget, as a lower campaign budget can stop ads from running properly. In practice, a TikTok campaign in Snifferdog needs at least £50 a day.

Enough to learn, not just to run

Meeting the minimum gets your ads running. To perform well, TikTok also needs enough results each week to learn who responds (see The learning phase explained). How much that takes depends on your goal.

Simple goals, such as page views

TikTok needs around 50 results a week. At £1 per page view, that's about £7 a day, well below the £50 minimum. So here, £50 a day is what TikTok really needs.

Bigger goals, such as leads or sales

A useful rule of thumb is a daily budget of around 10 times the cost of one result. At £15 per lead, that's around £150 a day.

Whichever is higher, the minimum or what TikTok needs to learn, is the real daily cost of including TikTok.

How this weights a small budget

Say your total budget is £100 a day across all platforms. TikTok's £50 minimum would take half of it, leaving the other platforms to share the rest. That can starve channels that would do more with the money.

A good rule of thumb is that TikTok shouldn't take more than about a quarter of your total daily budget. Because TikTok needs at least £50 a day, that means TikTok makes sense once your total budget reaches roughly £200 a day (around £6,000 a month). For a £15 lead goal needing £150 a day, you'd want a total of around £600 a day.

If your budget is smaller

1. Try a simpler goal. If TikTok can't afford to learn on leads or sales, a goal such as landing page views needs fewer pounds per result.
2. Run TikTok separately. Create a separate brief just for TikTok, so it doesn't eat into your other platforms' budgets, and run it when you can give it a proper test.
3. Leave TikTok out for now. Your budget will usually work harder on the other platforms, and you can add TikTok as you grow.

Once TikTok is running

• Keep it to one ad group where possible, so the budget isn't split and TikTok learns as quickly as it can.
• Leave it alone for 7 days. Avoid changing budgets, targeting or bids while it learns.
• Then change budgets gently. TikTok recommends increases of no more than 40% at a time while a campaign is learning, 30% once it has finished, and no more often than every two days. See Live Edit Mode: best practice.

Comparing TikTok fairly

Each platform counts conversions in its own way, and TikTok's figures can look more generous than other channels'. Before deciding TikTok deserves more budget, compare all your platforms using the same neutral source, such as Google Analytics or your own sales or enquiry records.

Read more: TikTok's own guide, About budgets for ads in TikTok Ads Manager.