Daniel Anderson
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TikTok can no longer be ignored. What began as a silly, viral dance platform has evolved into a social media behemoth. Businesses are clamoring to learn the lingo of Gen Z’s favorite app and get in front of TikTok’s highly engaged audience. Enter: TikTok ads library.
When getting started with TikTok ads, one of the first places you should check out is the TikTok ads library.
This new database is a great resource for inspiration, research, and performance benchmarks.
Before you launch your next TikTok ad campaign, here’s everything you need to know about the TikTok ads library.
What Is The TikTok Ads Library?
The TikTok ads library is a searchable repository of high-performing ads. These ads have been run on the platform for the past 30 days.
Inside TikTok’s robust Creative Center, marketers can explore TikTok ad creative, filter by industry and campaign objective, and review analytics.
This growing suite of tools is known on TikTok as Top Ads. Unlike the Facebook Ad Library, Top Ads is limited to ads “that have been authorized by advertisers, and may not reflect all top-performing auction ads.”
However, there is no shortage of value in the TikTok ads library. From uncovering trends to better understanding the market, Top Ads is a powerful resource for TikTok advertisers of every level.
Accessing The TikTok Ads Library
Top Ads is both completely free and accessible to anyone, even without a TikTok account. That being said, TikTok encourages users to log in and makes navigating a bit easier once you have done so.
To access Top Ads, simply visit this page.
You can select your target country and industry, sort by performance metrics, and even search through captions to find relevant videos.
Although the ads library is the main attraction, TikTok is also home to a variety of other useful resources. The Creative Center helps discover trends and surface insights on how to best connect with the TikTok community.
One of the most practical features is the ability to sort hashtags and songs by popularity. You can then visualize their usage over time.
Use The TikTok Ads Library Like A Pro
When used correctly, Top Ads is a game-changer for TikTok advertisers. To get the most out of your market research, here is a deep dive into the TikTok ads functionality:
Leverage The Filters
Top Ads offers six different filters to help you find the most relevant videos:
Country
Begin your search by exploring videos from your target country or countries. If your advertising campaigns are limited to your home country, this filter is a no-brainer.
However, if you lead a global brand, or, hope to expand internationally, this can be a great way to improve your understanding of other regions.
Putting yourself in the customers’ shoes and seeing what ads they are already exposed to will help you determine your business’ positioning in the local market.
Industry
The TikTok ads library offers a two-level industry filter.
The first level lets you narrow your selection to any number of the 21 primary categories. The optional second level lets you further refine your search to a specific niche.
For example, the ecommerce brand Allbirds may search for competitors in the ‘Apparel & Accessories’ category before diving deeper into ‘Men’s Shoes’.
Similarly, the telehealth company Hims could explore the ‘Medical Services’ subsection of the ‘Health’ category.
Objective
In the TikTok ads library, there are six campaign objectives: App Installs, Conversions, Lead Generation, Reach, Traffic, and Video Views.
When browsing for creative inspiration, getting this granular may not be necessary. When analyzing competitors or major brands, on the other hand, this level of detail can provide some insight into how others approach TikTok as a marketing channel.
In the booming category of Cosmetics, for example, we unsurprisingly see no results for App Installs or Lead Generation. But what’s more interesting is how other objectives compare.
Currently, the conversions campaign objective has more than twice the number of high-performing ads as the Reach, Traffic, and Video Views objectives combined.
While we know that Top Ads is not an exhaustive list of all active ads, this does indicate where a prospective advertiser in the cosmetics industry may find the best return on investment.
Duration
Duration allows you to filter videos based on their length, offering six choices in ten-second intervals.
Continuing with the example of conversion campaigns in the cosmetics niche, we see a similarly low number of ads with durations under 10 seconds and over 50 seconds.
Most high-performing ads appear to fall in the range of 10 – 30 seconds, with a significant drop-off beyond that length. Again, this is not a hard-and-fast rule, but it likely points to what duration is most effective within these parameters.
Time Frame
Users can also filter results from either the last 7 days or the last 30 days.
The default selection is 7 days. With a quickly evolving platform like TikTok, there is rarely a reason to look back any further.
Unless you are searching for a specific video, keeping your attention on the most recent ad examples is best for catching trends early.
Search
The final way to narrow results in the TikTok ads library is with the search bar. This tool allows you to search for any ads that contain a specific word or phrase in their caption.
Search is a quick way to find TikTok ads that mention your brand, feature a specific product, or, use terms relevant to your industry.
However, it’s important to remember that TikTok captions are often very short. Because of this, you may need to get creative with your keywords.
Analyze Winning Ads
After finding an ad that interests or inspires you, hover over the video and click the ‘View Top Ad’ button. From here, you will land on the ‘About this ad’ page, which reveals an insightful business analytics tool.
At the top of this page, there are a number of details including:
- Region
- Industry
- Objective
- Source (Video Editor, Ads Manager, etc.)
- Engagement (Likes, Comments, and Shares)
This high-level information is helpful – especially when sifting through Top Ads using the left and right arrows.
The real insights, however, lie in the analytics. While playing a video, you can see how CTR (click-through rate) and CVR (conversion rate) evolve over time.
For each of these metrics, TikTok compares the performance at every moment to all other moments in the video. This relative analysis allows you to visualize when, in any given high-performing ad, viewers clicked, converted, or stopped watching.
TikTok also reveals how other ads in the same industry perform against the same metric, giving users a sense of where this particular ad falls in the spectrum.
As you spend time exploring videos in your niche, these statistics will reveal how the copywriting, editing, and content of an ad impact its success.
You will likely begin to notice the tricks other advertisers use to keep viewers engaged and, eventually, figure out how to replicate that style in your own content.
Final Thoughts
TikTok’s ads library is a powerful tool for understanding what users respond to and, more importantly, what they don’t.
Although it’s still only five years old, TikTok is quickly becoming a go-to destination for social media marketers, and the ads library is a big part of that.
By studying the most successful TikTok campaigns in your industry, you can not only learn how to produce better content but also get a leg up on the competition.
See what is working, discover creative inspiration, and glean new insights into your target market by taking advantage of the TikTok ads library today.
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