TikTok can’t be called the youngest ad network anymore. The platform has been offering advertising services since 2018. It’s true that it hasn’t been able to get the influence it has before, and there are several issues with its optimization, which we hope will be fixed in the future. But in the meantime, let’s check how much it costs to advertise on this platform.
TikTok and its advertising opportunities
In 2019 AdAge indicated that an ad campaign on TikTok cost around $50K and $120K. Being slightly higher than in other platforms. Bear in mind that neither Instagram nor even Facebook charges that amount for a first-time ad campaign.
It’s true that a brand-new advertiser platform can determine the price to its users, as they have prospects and an incredibly huge audience. Nevertheless, what about competition? Well, there’s none, as there are no “sharks” yet. Therefore, if there’s no competition it’s a click pursuit, and advertisers are just forced to accept those terms.
Nevertheless, now that marketers have flooded TikTok. The war has started and it’s no different than the social media networks. Meaning that TikTok can’t determine the pricing of its own advertising anymore,
At this moment the TikTok advertising cost is low, meaning that even with a small budget you can have a chance. Although, people have different meanings of what “small budget” means. For example, the total pricing for a TikTok Advertising Campaign can be $500, with a daily spend of $50, and the cost per thousand impressions can be $10. It all depends.
What influences the pricing for TikTok Ads?
As with any other regular ad network, the pricing it’s not constant or fixed. it’s based on certain parameters that actually alter the cost. This system, being honest, is extremely raw, not close to being solid. And, if you compare it to Facebook Ads, it’s like putting three pine trees next to a forest. So it’s not really hard to understand how it works and what can make the pricing vary,
- Goal: Your goal and audience have a direct impact, not only on the TikTok Ads pricing but also on the payment methodology. Goals such as traffic, installs, and conversions are also a good fit for the CPC. However, when it comes to traffic and installs, the average pricing is cheap, but conversions are at least 15 times more expensive. clearly, only the CPV is available when it comes to videos.
- Sphere: Not that much impact, but the sphere still increases the pricing of the advertising.
- Target Audience.
- Type of Ad.
Surprisingly, TikTok doesn’t charge high at premium traffic, despite the huge flow from TIER 1 European regions.
Obviously, there is room for improvement.
We go further through advertising formats to fully understand how pricing works on TikTok.
Essentially, TikTok has only three formats. The rest are derivatives of them.
- Takeover. A unique format. It’s a full-screen ad video that appears the first time the user logs into the app. So it only appears at one user per day, it’s extremely expensive.
- In-feed. Ordinary advertising. They appear in the user’s feed while scrolling. They last around 9 to 15 seconds in length. And they hide as being part of the user’s regular feed, like a normal video. They can even comment, like, and share the video, just like regular content.
- Hashtags. It will run the ad based on the hashtags selected, it’s based on trends, and is extremely expensive, costing up to $150K.
Alternative advertising in TikTok and its cost
Besides the regular options TikTok offers us for advertising, there are two other alternatives that can help us promote your products or services, but first, let’s compare TikTok advertising cost against other platforms.
TikTok charges 10$ for every one thousand impressions. A little bit higher than Instagram and Facebook. If Instagram has a price of $0.6, then on TikTok it would be $1.1.
You can also try to advertise with bloggers and other TikTok content creators, paying a lot less than on Instagram, if you decide to work with a 10K content creator on TikTok, it might cost you around 25 to 50$, or work with a 100K content creator that might charge you 300-500$, on with a 1 Million followers Content Creator that will charge from 2,000$ to 3,000$, 2K less than on Instagram.
Free advertising on Tik Tok
TikTok gives you the chance to organically advertise your products and services while doing it for free, although, this is extremely difficult, nevertheless, it’s really appreciable that it gives us that opportunity. Mainly because you can reduce the budget by working with influencers with cheaper pricing than in other social networks, reducing the TikTok Advertising Costs a lot.