TikTok ads The whole screen, and one line to earn it.
Nothing else on the page competes with your ad here, which sounds like an advantage until you realise the next video is one flick away. TikTok is the cheapest reach in paid media and the least forgiving brief in it.
250+ active client engagements · Video produced in-house, vertical and captioned · Reported in customers, never in views
Seven ways TikTok
budget burns.
Almost every one of them is a production decision rather than a media one. That is the part most agencies leave to the client and then report around.
A television commercial, cropped
Landscape footage squeezed into a vertical frame, a logo sting at the front and a voiceover that never met a real customer. It is recognised as an ad in under a second, and skipped in the same second.
The brand deck arriving before the hook
Two seconds of establishing shot, then the logo, then the offer. On this platform the order is reversed: the hook, then the proof, then whoever you are — if there is anyone still watching.
Waiting for something to go viral
Reach is not a strategy and it is not a deliverable. Plenty of accounts collect millions of views and cannot name a single customer that came from them, because nothing under the video ever asked for one.
One video, run until the audience is sick of it
Creative fatigue arrives faster here than anywhere else. Without a queue of new concepts, frequency climbs, the cost per result follows, and the platform gets blamed for a production problem.
Spark Ads left switched off
Running an existing organic post — yours or a creator's — as the ad keeps its comments and its context, and it is the format that looks least like advertising. Most accounts we open have never used it.
No tracking behind the click
The Events API not installed, conversions defined as page views, and the whole channel judged on video-view metrics. Cheap reach means nothing if you cannot tell which of it produced a customer.
Comments unmoderated and unanswered
The comment section under a TikTok ad is part of the ad. Left alone it becomes objection-handling done by strangers; used properly it is where half the buying questions get answered.
Full screen, sound on, thumb ready.
There is no feed around it and no headline above it. The video is the targeting, the copy and the offer at once — which is why the production brief matters more here than the media plan does.
1080 × 1920 · sound on
@yourbusinessname
The hook in the first second, the offer by the third.
Learn moreOriginal soundSo the hook is written before the script.
A problem, a mistake, a before shot, a price. Whatever the first line is, everything after it is written backwards from whether it earned the next three seconds — and captions are burned in, because plenty of it is watched on mute in a queue somewhere.
Then we read watch-through and cost per result by concept rather than by audience. On TikTok the opening line explains more of the outcome than the targeting does, and that is the opposite of how most media plans are built.
9:16
the only shape
1080 × 1920, full bleed. Anything letterboxed is read as an import from somewhere else before a word registers.
100
characters of ad text
The whole caption. It sits over the video, competing with the video, so it says one thing.
20
characters in the display name
Shorter than most business names. Worth deciding deliberately rather than discovering at upload.
21–34
seconds, TikTok's own guidance
Long enough to make a case, short enough to finish. Most brand videos arrive at half that and say nothing.
50
US dollars, minimum daily budget
TikTok's published campaign-level floor. Below the equivalent of real daily spend, delivery never learns anything.
1
organic post becomes the ad
Spark Ads run a real post — yours or a creator's — with its comments and context intact. It is why it rarely looks like an ad.
TikTok format specifications and published minimums, not performance claims.
SoudCoh · all channels
250+
Active client engagements
Google, Meta, LinkedIn, TikTok and organic, run by one team
National cultural institution
A$634K
Of media kept working
From a A$750K annual budget, at a 15.5% agency fee
Where an engagement starts
A$3,000
Minimum monthly ad spend
Our largest clients run multiple eight figures a month across paid
Figures trace to live engagements and to our published engagement terms. Public-sector and cultural clients are identified by sector and jurisdiction only. None of it is a forecast for your account.
Ten things happen on a TikTok account. Here they are, in order.
This is the part most agency pages keep vague, and it is the only part that decides whether the money works. So it is written down.
Fix the measurement before anything runs
TikTok pixel and the Events API together, so conversions the browser loses are still sent from your website's server. Cheap reach is only useful if you can say which of it produced a customer.
Decide what a result is, and price it
Calls, form submissions, bookings and purchases counted separately with values attached. Video views and follows are read as signals about the creative, never as the outcome.
Be honest about whether this is your platform
TikTok creates demand rather than catching it, and that suits some businesses far better than others. If your buyer is a procurement lead with a six-month cycle, we will point you at LinkedIn on the first call.
Write the hook before the script
The first line has to be a reason to keep watching — a problem, a mistake, a before shot, a price. Everything else in the video is written backwards from whether that line earns the next three seconds.
Shoot it like a post, not like a commercial
Vertical, hand-held, spoken to camera, captions burned in. Real material from the job, the workshop or the install outperforms studio production here more reliably than on any other platform.
Run Spark Ads wherever there is a real post
Promoting an existing organic post keeps its comments, its sound and its context, and it is the closest thing to advertising that does not look like advertising. Creator posts can be run the same way with permission.
Keep the audience broad and let delivery work
TikTok's delivery reads watch time, replays and saves, and it is good at it. Over-narrowing here costs more than it does on Meta, so the targeting stays wide and the creative does the selecting.
Queue creative before it is needed
Concepts are produced in batches and rotated on a schedule. Fatigue arrives fastest on this platform, so waiting for the cost per result to climb is a month of budget spent learning something predictable.
Work the comment section
Questions under the ad get answered, objections get handled in public, and the good ones become the hook for the next video. It is free research and most advertisers leave it on the floor.
Report in customers, then move the budget
A fixed cadence covering what was spent, what it produced, what changed and why. If TikTok is creating demand that Google is closing, the report says so — and the budget follows the evidence, not the platform.
The first ninety days, honestly.
- Week 0
The audit and the first call
What you sell, who buys it, what a customer is worth, and an honest answer about whether TikTok is the right place to spend before Google or Meta is covered.
- Week 1
Tracking, then creative
Pixel, Events API, conversion definitions and CRM routing go in first. Where you sell products, the catalogue is connected in the same pass.
- Weeks 1–2
The build and the first batch
Campaign structure, audiences, and a first batch of concepts with the hooks written before the scripts. A second person checks all of it. Nothing is live and nothing has spent.
- Day one
You press go
Campaigns are created paused so you can read the whole build first. You activate when you are ready, not when we are.
- Weeks 2–6
Hooks, not audiences
On TikTok the opening line explains the result more than the targeting does. We read watch-through and cost per result by concept, keep the hooks that earned attention, and put the next batch into production.
- From there
Rhythm
A standing creative cycle, weekly optimisation, comment moderation, reporting on a fixed cadence whether the news is good or bad, and a quarterly conversation about where the next block of budget should go.
Campaigns are created paused, every time. You read the build before a dollar moves — that is a rule we hold ourselves to, not a favour.
On TikTok, two of the six stages keep everyone honest.
Compound is how our team works on any account — six stages every change passes through. This is the channel where the measurement and the reporting do the most work.
Meter
If it can't be measured, it doesn't get bought.
TikTok will happily sell you attention by the million, and attention is the easiest thing in marketing to mistake for progress. The Events API and per-action conversions go in before the first video runs, so reach is never the number in the report.
Statement
A fixed cadence, good news or bad.
This is the channel most likely to produce a month that looks spectacular and sells nothing, and the month after that quietly works. A fixed reporting rhythm is what stops either one being mistaken for the trend.
Four clients. Four real numbers.
Three of these are Google Ads accounts and the tiles say so. They are here rather than dressed up as TikTok results, because the point is the unit: customers and what each one cost, never views.
- End-of-lease cleaning · Melbourne · Google Ads138jobs booked in 41 daysA$20.43 cost per job · 21.20% conversion rate · A$2,819.92 ad spendPink Flamingo
- Security and CCTV · New South Wales · Google Ads39qualified leads in 15 daysCommercial and residential split · same-day lead alerts to the teamNexData
- Automotive · Melbourne · Google Ads17calls booked in 7 daysOne service, one city, measured in answered calls rather than viewsBudget Towing Melbourne
- Media buying · AustraliaA$634Kof media kept workingFrom a A$750K annual budget, at a 15.5% agency fee against a typical 18–22%National cultural institution
Before you ask us anything
Here is what everybody asks first.
TikTok ads, answered.
Cost, timing, contracts, who owns the account and the videos, reporting, and what happens when a campaign is not working.
The first call is free and there is no deck.
Talk to us about your adsTikTok generally costs less per thousand people reached than Meta or Google, which is a real part of its appeal — but reach is not the number that matters. Two separate figures apply. Your ad spend goes to TikTok, and the smallest companies we work with invest a minimum of A$3,000 a month, with our largest clients running multiple eight figures a month across paid channels. Our management fee is separate and scales with the work, and production is included rather than billed as an extra. The first call is free and you get a real number for your situation before you commit.
Traffic arrives quickly, because delivery is cheap and the format is hard to ignore. Results take longer to read honestly: the first two to four weeks are spent finding which hooks earn attention and which produce enquiries, and those are not always the same videos. Campaigns generally settle into a rhythm around 60 to 90 days, once there is enough conversion data behind the creative to tell the difference.
No long-term lock-in. We would rather keep the work because it is producing than because a contract says you have to stay. What we do ask for is enough runway to be fair to the channel — TikTok is a creative-led platform, and judging it on the first batch of videos is judging it before the testing has happened. The terms are put in front of you in plain English before anything is signed.
Your TikTok profile stays yours, and so does everything we shoot and edit for you — you can post it organically as well as run it as an ad. We own and run the ad account itself, because the build is proprietary methodology refined across 250+ engagements: creative testing frameworks, audience architecture and conversion tracking. You get full-visibility reporting on performance and spend at all times, and on long-term marketing agreements ownership and handover options are available to discuss.
We tell you, in the report, in plain English, and we change what we are doing — on TikTok that means new hooks before new targeting, because the opening line explains most of the result. If the honest answer is that your customers are not here, we would rather move the budget to a channel where they are than keep billing you for views. That conversation happens early, not at the end of a quarter.
A fixed cadence, good news or bad. Each report covers what was spent, what it produced, what we changed and why, and what happens next — written in the language you use about your own business rather than platform jargon. Views and watch time appear as evidence about the creative, never as the headline. You can also see live performance and spend for yourself at any time.
It works best for consumer-facing brands and service businesses whose work can be shown rather than explained — trades, fitness, hospitality, healthcare, education, retail and lifestyle. If your buyer is a procurement lead with a six-month approval chain, LinkedIn is the better platform and we will say so. For online stores we run it as a full commerce channel: creator-style video into product pages with catalogue retargeting behind it.
No, and going viral is not something we will offer you. The ads that work on TikTok are demonstrations, before-and-afters, quick explanations, customer stories and honest answers to the question everybody asks — shot vertically on a phone, with the hook in the first line. Reach is a by-product of the creative being good, not a deliverable we can promise.
A Spark Ad promotes an existing organic post as the advertisement — either from your own account or, with permission, from a creator who has posted about you. It keeps the original comments, sound and engagement, and it carries the creator's own voice, which is why it reads as content rather than as an interruption. It is usually the highest-performing format on the platform and it is the one most accounts have never switched on.
We do, and it is part of the job rather than an extra — hooks, scripts, filming, editing, captions and the rotation schedule. Where you already have footage from the job site or the workshop we will use it, because on TikTok real material regularly outperforms polished production. We also work with creators where that is the right fit, and run those posts as Spark Ads rather than as re-cut brand videos.
With the TikTok pixel and the Events API running together, so conversions the browser loses to privacy settings and blockers are still sent from your website's server. Actions are defined separately — calls, forms, bookings, purchases — with values attached, and leads carry the campaign and the creative that produced them into your CRM. Without that, TikTok reporting is a view count with a budget next to it.
Yes. Product catalogue connected, creator-style video and Spark Ads doing the prospecting, and dynamic retargeting behind them for people who browsed or abandoned a cart — with pixel and Events API tracking so revenue lands back in the platform accurately. The finish line is an order rather than a booked job, but the discipline is identical: track it properly, test the hooks constantly, and move the budget to what pays.
TikTok is one of five ways we buy attention.
It is almost never run on its own. The pattern that works is TikTok creating the demand, and Google or Meta catching the people it sent looking.
- Instagram adsThe closest format to TikTok. A hook that works here usually works in Reels, which makes the production budget go twice as far.
- Facebook adsBroader reach, a wider age range, and where lead forms do most of their work. Usually the platform that closes what TikTok opened.
- LinkedIn adsIf you sell to businesses, councils or enterprise procurement, that is the platform to read before this one.
- Where the demand TikTok created gets searchedWhere the demand TikTok created goes to get searched. Running the two together is how you find out whether the video actually worked.
- Where this sits among the other channelsThe hub above this page. TikTok is rarely the first budget line, and this is the argument for what should be.
- Keeping the reporting honest on a views-rich channelHow a tap becomes a measured conversion. On a channel this good at producing views, it is the only thing keeping the reporting honest.
If the question is how much of the budget belongs on paid social at all, what works on paid social for trades right now is the practical version of that argument.
Get the TikTok audit
We read your account, watch what you have already run, tell you which hooks earned attention and which did not, check whether your conversions are actually being counted, and say plainly whether this is the right channel for you. Yours to keep either way.
No pitch deck. No upsell. A real conversation and a written list of leaks.