TikTok Ad Specs for 2022

TikTok is an exciting opportunity for you to drive engagement and get creative with your brand’s personality but being a relatively new platform, you might be confused about the different types of TikTok ads and how to use them. This article serves as a starting point, guiding you through each different TikTok ad specs, how they function, and how each can be used to meet your different campaign objectives.

Why Should You Advertise on TikTok?

TikTok ads have taken the marketing world by storm.

67% of Tiktok users agree that ads on TikTok capture their attention; a 10% lead compared to other platforms. TikTok has always had fun, entertainment, and trust at the center of its core values, and it’s not about to throw that away with its ad formats.

So how much do TikTok ads cost? They start for $10 per 1000 views (CPM), and there is a required minimum spend of $500 for a TikTok paid ads campaign.

Is it worth it?

There’s no denying that ads on this platform deliver. TikTok integrates ad content in clever and sometimes surprising ways that engage viewers and keep them watching. The formatting of ads also ensures that people stay stimulated, with 72% of people perceiving ads on TikTok as inspiring.

It’s also the go-to platform for trends, with 7 in 10 people finding TikTok 21% more trendsetting than other platforms. Brands have harnessed trends in their ads and created interactive videos that promote user-generated content and spread brand awareness.

The numbers do most of the talking. TikTok is a champion for ad campaigns. But what are the different TikTok ad formats, how do they work, and what’s best for your brand?

Let’s get into it.

TikTok Ad Specs for 2022

The following Image Ad specs are for News Feed App series placements.

News Feed App series placements appear in other news aggregation apps owned by TikTok’s creator ByteDance including BuzzVideo, TopBuzz, NewsRepublic, and Babe.

Apart from appearing in TikTok In-Feed, News Feed app placements can also appear post-video and on the details page. ‘Post-video’ means your Ads will play at the end of a video.

The ‘details page’ is underneath the content on a video or article page within any of the News Apps listed above.

TikTok Ad Specs for Image Ads

These are the ad specs that are to be considered for image ads.

Character lengths:

1. App Name or Brand Name: 1 – 40 half-width characters including punctuation and spaces (0.5 – 20 full-width characters)
2. Description: 12 – 100 Latin characters, 6 – 50 Asian characters.
3. Emojis and the characters “{ }” and “#” cannot appear in the description.

Note: Emojis are not allowed in the App or Brand Name.

Depending on the device’s brand and model, longer text may truncate.

Tip 1: Keep the most important creative elements of your Ad in the middle of the screen to maximize display visibility. This avoids the description or logo obscuring your content.

Tip 2: TikTok provides an image cropping tool that allows you to upload and resize any image. This makes it easy to fit their platform’s aspect ratio and size guidelines.

Images:

1. File type and size: JPG or PNG and no size restriction (less than or equal to 500KB recommended)
2. Resolution: TikTok lists no restriction but recommends ≥ 1200 x 628 px

TikTok Ad Specs for Video Ads

Like TikTok Image ads, TikTok Video ads can be placed in-feed on the TikTok app or other ByteDance News Feed apps.

Here are the ad specs for TikTok Video Ads

Character lengths:

1. App Name or Brand Name: 1 – 40 half-width characters including punctuation and spaces (0.5 – 20 full-width characters)
2. Description: 1 – 100 Latin characters, 1 – 50 Asian characters.
3. Emojis and the characters “{ }” and “#” cannot appear in the description.

Note: Emojis are not allowed in the App or Brand Name. Depending on the device’s brand and model, longer text may truncate. Videos:

These are the ideal sizes for videos for TikTok and News Feed App Series Placements:

TikTok Video Ad Placements

1. Aspect ratio: 9:16, 1:1, or 16:9
2. Resolution: ≥540 x 960px, ≥640 x 640px, or ≥960 x 540px
3. File type and size: .mp4, .mov, .mpeg, .3gp, or .avi and less than 500MB
4. Video duration: 5 – 60 seconds (9 – 15 sec recommended) Bitrate: ≥516 kbps

News Feed App Series Video Ad Placements

1. Aspect ratio: 16:9 or 1:1
2. Resolution: no restrictions but TikTok suggests ≥720 x 1280px, ≥640 x 640px, or ≥1280 x 720px
3. File type and size: .mp4, .mov, .mpeg, .3gp, or .gif less than 500MB
4. Video duration: No limit but TikTok suggests short videos of between 5 – 60 seconds
5. Bitrate: ≥516 kbps

Note: Like TikTok Image Ads, TikTok Video provides an optimization tool for video aspect ratio. This allows you to upload any video and adjust it to fit with TikTok Ad requirements.

1. Profile Image Aspect ratio: 1:1
2. File type and size: JPG, JPEG, or PNG and < 50KB

Other TikTok Ad Formats

TikTok offers 3 other ad formats: Spark Ads, Playable Ads, and Carousel Ads.

Spark Ads allows advertisers to leverage organic TikTok posts and user-generated content (UGC).

TikTok Carousel Ads allow you to feature multiple images in a slideshow-type format, linking each image to either the same or a unique URL.

If you’re looking to drive installs for an app or game, we recommend TikTok’s Playable Ads. Playable Ads are interactive ads that invite users to take part in a full-screen playable experience, like a preview.

Note: It is recommended that Playable Ads are compatible with Pangle (TikTok Audience Network), which is only available in the following countries as of 2022:

1. Japan
2. Korea
3. Taiwan
4. Vietnam
5. Thailand
6. Malaysia
7. Egypt
8. Turkey
9. United Arab Emirates
10. Saudi Arabia
11. Russia
12. Indonesia
13. Singapore
14. Cambodia
15. Philippines
16. Brazil
17. Mexico
18. Israel
19. Ukraine
20. Belarus
21. Kazakhstan

Now we will go over Carousel and Spark Ads.

TikTok Ad Specs for Carousel Ads

TikTok Carousel ads are supported on the Newsfeed App series as in-feed ads and detail page ads in TopBuzz and Buzz Video.

Use Carousel ads to tell your brand’s story or as a virtual catalog for a product or service. You have the option to link each frame of the carousel to a unique landing page.

TikTok Carousel Ads support up to 10 images in one ad in a left-to-right sequence.

Text character lengths:

1. Ad Title: between 12 – 40 characters (20 Japanese characters)
2. Ad Caption: only one line with a maximum of 20 characters

Character specifics:

1. Half-width characters are counted as 1 character
2. Full-width characters are counted as 2 characters
3. Punctuation and spaces within the text are counted as characters
4. Spaces at the beginning and end of the text will not be counted as a character
5. Emojis not supported

Carousel Images

1. Number: between 2 – 10 images
2. File type and size: JPG or PNG, ≤500 KB is suggested

File resolution: no requirement is listed but depending on whether a user chooses the square or the horizontal format, the system will tailor the image in the center to be:

1. Square: 640 x 640 px
2. Horizontal: 1200 x 628 px

TikTok Ad Specs for Spark Ads

If you’re looking to delve into influencer marketing consider Spark Ads! TikTok Spark ads use organic posts from any existing TikTok account, allowing advertisers and influencers to promote it.

This creates a win-win situation for influencers and brands. They gain more followers while you gain views and traffic to your advertised product.

According to TikTok, Spark Ads have a 24% higher completion rate and 142% higher engagement rate than In-Feed ads.

Spark ads allow you to boost your lower-performing posts, supercharge your high ones or promote other creators’ content (with their authorization).

There is a small ad logo and a learn more button which can link to a URL of your choice.

Overall this is a native ad that stays true to TikTok’s motto we mentioned earlier ‘Don’t create ads, create TikToks!’

Influencers promoting products using TikTok Spark Ads need to ensure App authorization is turned on in TikTok. They also need to give consent to the advertiser on the selected video for promotion.

Lastly, they’ll need to generate a code to send it over to the advertiser who is running the ad.

Once you, the advertiser, have received the code from the influencer, you can head over to the TikTok Ad Manager and set up your Spark Ad.

• No restriction on video ratio, resolution, file type, file size, duration, and bitrate
• Ad caption for Reach, Video View, and Reach and Frequency (Beta) objectives can be blank.
• It cannot be blank for Engagement (Beta), Traffic and App Install objectives
• Emojis and account mentions are allowed in captions
• The display name and text in the Spark Ad reflect the organic post and cannot be edited through the Ad Manager

Conclusion

Understanding what the different TikTok ad specs can offer you is a great first step to thinking about your ad campaign.

Here’s what you need to remember. All the optimization in the world won’t help if your content is a poor fit. Instead, think about what your target audience’s ideal For You Page looks like, and create something they’ll want to see.