Commerce Performance Playbook

Stronger commerce performance starts here Your guide to building, scaling

and measuring performance

on TikTok Powered by Smart+ Catalog Ads

i n t ro d u ct i o n

•

Shoppers

83

%

of people who use TikTok for inspiration say it ultimately led to a purchase1

are ready.

Is your

41

%

of users who turn to TikTok to figure out where to buy complete the purchase directly on TikTok1

But stronger commerce performance does not come from campaign optimisation alone. It comes from the foundations behind it: better

setup?

signals, smarter automation, fresher creative and the measurement that shows what's really driving results.

The question is:

Commerce moves fast, and so do your shoppers. People discover, search, compare and buy across more touchpoints than ever, moving between TikTok, websites

How can brands turn shopper intent into repeatable sales growth?

and apps with growing confidence and intent.

1. TikTok and Deloitte, From Query to Cart: The Intersection of Search & Commerce, 2026.

2

introduction •

>>> Introducing the

Commerce Fundamentals

behind stronger performance

Data signals. Automation.

Creative. Measurement.

Individually they're powerful. Together they're the Commerce Fundamentals: four connected building blocks that help campaigns perform, scale and prove impact.

3

introduction •

The four

fundamentals, explained 1

3

Build the foundation

Better performance starts with better inputs. Build a strong foundation with high-quality data signals and a setup designed to help campaigns learn and deliver.

Fuel with creative Creative powers performance on TikTok. Produce, test and scale a continuous supply of native content designed to drive action.

2

4

Automate execution

Scale what works. Use AIpowered solutions to connect the right shoppers with the right products, more efficiently.

Optimise with confidence Measurement turns performance into confidence. Use attribution, experiments, and Marketing Mix Modelling to understand the impact TikTok is really driving.

Think of these fundamentals as the setup before the scale-up.

This playbook outlines exactly how to put them in place so you can scale with confidence.

4

solution spotlight •

Turn the fundamentals into performance with Smart+ Catalog Ads With the right foundations in place, our AI-powered solution Smart+ Catalog Ads can help turn setup into scalable performance by automatically matching products to high-intent shoppers, optimising delivery across targeting and creative, and helping campaigns learn faster over time.

So you can scale with less manual effort and more confidence in what's driving results.

Ready to

get started?

5

Fundamental 1

Build the foundation The bedrock of a successful commerce campaign on TikTok is providing our system with all the data it needs to help you deliver better results for your campaigns. This is because data connections and catalog power all of your measurement, targeting, optimisation and automation capabilities.

24

%

lower CPA for commerce advertisers that meet all criteria of a high-quality setup vs those with low quality setups1

In short:

Better data in =

Better performance out.

1. Internal TikTok data 6

Fundamental 1 •

Here's what you need to do to build that foundation: 1

Events API

Pixel

More resilient to ad blockers and

browser limitations

Fast implementation via JavaScript tag Good starting point for most advertisers

Stronger first-party data reliability

Set up your Events API and Pixel Start by setting up Pixel, Events API or both to send our system the key signals that power how TikTok understands shopper behaviour, from browsing products to completing a purchase. These signals help the system learn what’s working and optimise delivery in real time.

B oth Maximum signal coverage and resilience.

Recommended for long-term performance and measurement strength

Using both gives you stronger coverage, better resilience and more consistent performance signals over time.

7

Fundamental 1 •

2 Upload your catalog Next, is your product catalog –

this is what powers personalised product delivery.

Upload or connect your catalog using a product feed or a partner integration (e.g. Shopify). Make sure it includes complete product information, imagery and video assets to support dynamic delivery.

Once connected, link your catalog to your event sources (such as Pixel, Events API or app events). This allows TikTok to match shopper actions to products in your catalog, helping the system identify and serve the most relevant products to each user when running catalog ads.

Pro tip: Keep product data accurate and up to date by setting up a feed schedule. Include details about availability

descriptions

categories

pricing

promotions

8

Fundamental 1 •

3 Add full-funnel event parameters Pass key parameters such as content_id, value and currency so our system can match real shopper actions to specific products in

your catalog.

This is what powers accurate measurement and smarter catalogbased optimisation – including Smart+ Catalog Ads (more on that in the

next section...).

Pro tip:

15

%

Recommended

full-funnel event setup: Page View

View Content (with content_id)

Add To Cart (with content_id)

Ensure primary commerce events include the content_id parameter. When match quality is high (>70%), ROAS improves by up to 15%1.

Initiate Checkout

Purchase / Complete Payment (with content_id, value and currency)

Pass valid customer info, such as email or phone

≥

70

%

Note: Aim for ≥70% match rate between events and catalog SKUs for key funnel actions.

1. TikTok Internal Testing Analysis 9

Fundamental 1 •

4

5

Set up Advanced Matching

Check data validity

Share high-quality match key information, such as email address or phone number, via Advanced Matching to help our system more reliably match website events with platform users.

Make sure your setup is clean and consistent. Events should fire correctly, without duplication, and product IDs should match your catalog exactly.

Pro tip: Use Manual and Automatic Advanced Matching together where possible to maximise match quality.

Time for a quick sense-check 10

F u n da m e n ta l 1 •

Upload or connect your catalog and keep it fully up to date

Implement Pixel and/or Events API correctly

B u i l d t h e fo u n dat i o n

Ready to scale?

Use this checklist to make sure your setup is good to go.

Ensure full-funnel events are firing (View Content → Purchase)

Pass required parameters (content_id,

value, currency)

Set up Advanced Matching with email address or phone number where available

Ensure events fire cleanly with no duplication and correct product IDs

Maintain >70% match rate for key events

With your foundations in place, the next step is putting automation to work.

11

Fundamental 2

Automate execution Manual campaign building can only take you so far. As commerce gets more complex and culture moves faster than ever, keeping up with what's working becomes harder to do by hand.

Our AI-powered solution, Smart+ Catalog Ads, makes it easier to keep up. Designed to help you reach the right shoppers with the right products, it automatically surfaces the most relevant products to high-intent shoppers using formats that perform best.

41%

lower CPA for sales campaigns

(E-commerce) with Smart+ setup* vs fully manual setup1.

29%

lower CPA when compared to manually created campaigns. 2

Beta tests (Sep 30 - Oct 14, 2025). *The Smart+ setup is a campaign setup where all Smart+ solutions are enabled to deliver superior performance through automation.

Q1 2024 Catalog Ads Beta studies from the Catalog Ads Beta tests.

12

F u n da m e n ta l 2 •

1 Follow these steps to get started with

Smart+ Catalog

Ads

Enable your Sales objective Turn on Smart+ Catalog Ads in TikTok Ads Manager under the Sales objective. This activates automated delivery that matches your products with the shoppers most likely to convert.

2 Set your budget strategy

Let Smart+ campaign budget optimise your budget automatically. Choose between Daily or Lifetime budget and add a spend target

per ad group.

Please note that when using Smart+ campaign budget, all ad groups in the campaign would need to share the same optimisation location, goal, event and target CPA (if used).

For more control, you can set ad group budgets manually – but this is best reserved for highly specific use cases.

Pro tip: Daily budget guidance: 10–30x your CPA

Maximum Delivery

/ Highest Value / tROAS: ≥ 10x average CPA

Cost Cap / tROAS: ≥30× average CPA

13

Fundamental 2 •

Set optimisation and bidding 3

Define your optimisation goal and bidding strategy, then set your budget schedule. This helps the system understand what success looks like and when to prioritise spend.

4 Connect your data signals

Select your Pixel connection and ensure your campaign is aligned across optimisation goal, event and target CPA (where applicable).

Pro tip: Implement these advanced settings:

Attribution: 7-day click or 1day view (default)

Target CPA ≥ last 7-day CPA

tROAS: ≤ last 7-day average ROAS

Define your audience targeting approach 5

Use Audience Controls and Audience Suggestions to enable Smart+ to reach the right users at the right time to maximise performance. Only use manual targeting when you have strict specific audience requirements.

Pro tip: Audience Suggestions may expand reach to find additional users to maximise performance.

Set placements and product strategy 6

Smart+ automatically runs across available placements (TikTok, Search, Pangle, Lemon8, CapCut – availability varies by region). You can also choose your preferred placements to suit your strategy.

Pro tip: You can turn off comments, downloading, and sharing if preferred.

Product setup guidance:

· Small catalog → All products

· Large catalog → Best sellers

14

Fundamental 2 • Ad Group 2 ...

Ad Group 30

Create asset groups and ads 7

Ad group 1

Activate Smart+ Catalog Ads to automatically create ads

When you're creating your ad, add your destination URL for secondary clicks and non-product actions.

Use different URLs per asset group for clarity. Apply or customise UTM parameters where needed.

Setting up for Multi URL

Asset Group 1

Asset Group 2

Asset Group 3

URL #1

URL #2

URL #3

Asset Group 1

Asset Group 2

Asset Group 3

Product Set #1

Product Set #2

Product Set #3

Each ad group can have up to 30 asset groups. And each asset group can have maximum of 50 creatives.

This structure offers flexibility and control, including creative-to-text pairing, linked to multiple different URLs and other creative strategies.

...

Asset Group 30 URL #30

or Setting up for Multiple products assets

Asset groups are where your ads

and tracking come together.

Think of them as containers that help organise different creative approaches, URLs and product sets within each ad group.

Campaign

...

Asset Group 30 Product Set #30

or Setting up for creative control

...

Asset Group 1

Asset Group 2

Asset Group 3

Asset Group 30

Creative #1

Creative #2

Creative #3

Creative #30

Text #1

Text #2

Text #3

Text #30 15

Fundamental 2 •

8 Keep your learning phase stable

Avoid unnecessary changes while the system is learning –this helps the system stabilise and optimise faster.

x Pausing campaigns

During learning phase, avoid:

x Reducing budget or bid x Narrowing targeting x Changing bidding strategy x Making budget/bid changes >40% per operation

Pro tip: Let campaigns run for 7 days or reach 25 conversions before making major changes.

Before you scale, check your setup 16 15

Fundamental 2 •

Enable Smart+ Catalog Ads under the Sales objective

Choose Smart+ campaign budget to

automate optimisation

Set a daily or lifetime budget aligned with your target CPA

Automate e xecution

Ready to scale?

Use this checklist to quickly confirm your setup is ready to perform.

Configure your optimisation goal and bidding strategy

Ensure Pixel connection is active and correctly aligned

Set the appropriate attribution window and

conversion event

Apply Audience Controls and Audience Suggestions

to automate audience targeting

Enable placements across all available inventory

Structure asset groups with clear creative strategy

and URL setup

Apply destination URLs and tracking

parameters correctly

Follow learning phase stability rules when making campaign changes

Want to see Smart+ in action?

17

Fundamental 2 •

The fundamentals in action

How Otto scaled sales – while cutting costs

The results

OTTO wanted to drive more installs, more purchases, and lower costs. With Smart+ Catalog Ads, they achieved all three.

The strategy

+325%

“

purchases

Smart+ has redefined how we approach scale on the platform. By trusting the automated optimization, we achieved a level of consistent performance that turned TikTok into a key driver for our conversions.

+81.6%

It’s a powerful tool that delivers both efficiency and volume, making it an indispensable part of our daily media mix.

ROAS

OTTO joined TikTok's alpha release for Smart+ Catalog Ads, using AI-driven automation to handle delivery, creative selection and audience targeting at scale – across both app retargeting and prospecting.

+759%

By pairing Smart+ with optimised catalog imagery, they reduced manual complexity and gave the system more room to learn.

Read the case study

Android installs

“

Objective

The results came from letting Smart+ automation do what it does best – matching the right products to the right people at the right moment, across delivery, targeting, and creative.

Alexander Fleck,

Online Marketing Manager at OTTO

Now your campaign execution strategy is set and ready to go – the next ingredient is creative.

18

F u n da m e n ta l 3

Fuel with creative Creative drives performance on TikTok. But keeping up with demand for fresh content can be a challenge.

The good news? You don't always need to create more from scratch. Creator content, catalog assets and AI-powered tools can help you build a steady flow of performance-ready creative at scale.

Here's how to increase creative supply, reduce fatigue and give your campaigns more opportunities to perform.

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Fundamental 3 •

1

2

Unlock creator content with Content Suite

Prepare your catalog assets

Content Suite helps you find, manage and amplify creator-led content already talking about

your brand.

Instead of searching manually, you can surface high-performing organic content, get it approved in one click, and push it directly into your Creative Library for activation.

It also helps you work with creators more efficiently – from briefing to management – all in one place.

44x

Boost content discovery and find native mentions of your brand, with up to 44x more results than a typical search1

Strong creative starts with strong product assets. Upload multiple high-quality product images and use vertical-friendly formats such as 9:16 where possible. Giving TikTok more assets to work with helps improve how products appear across carousel and video formats.

To maximise flexibility, include at least three product images and use item_group_id to group product variants where relevant. This gives the system more opportunities to identify and serve the bestperforming creative combinations.

Pro tip: More asset variety gives automation more to test, learn from and optimise over time.

1. Internal TikTok Data.

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Fundamental 3 •

Did you know?

3 Turn product assets into ad formats that perform Once your assets are in place, Smart+ Catalog Ads can automatically transform them into performanceready ad formats like carousel ads and product videos.

Using multiple formats together helps you reach more shoppers and improve performance across the funnel.

Pro tip: Try Carousel Collage to make static catalog assets more dynamic.

Compared to traditional carousels, it can drive +56% CTR uplift and up to 18% CPA improvement2.

16

%

higher ROAS when Carousel & Video are used together compared to video alone1.

1. Q1 2024 Catalog Ads Beta studies.

21

Fundamental 3 •

4 Generate more creative with Image-to-Video With tools like Image-to-Video, you can turn static product images into short-form videos

at scale.

This helps you increase creative volume without increasing production time, giving automation more assets to test and optimise. The result? More creative variety, less fatigue and a stronger pipeline of content to

power performance.

Pro tip:

Use clear prompts for camera movement, realistic action-and-reaction details, seasonal context, and effects to turn static images into more dynamic, scalable video creatives.

Before we move on

let's check your setup 22

Fundamental 3 •

Use Content Suite to discover and activate creator content

Add creator content to campaigns via Spark Ads on a regular basis

Fuel the creative

Ready to scale?

Use this to quickly check your creative setup is ready to go.

Use catalog assets to power carousel and video ad formats

Ensure product-led creative clearly shows the product, benefit and reason to buy

Include multiple high-quality product images in recommended formats

Group product variants using item_group_id where relevant

Continuously add new creative to reduce fatigue and support ongoing learning

Creative sorted! Now let's make sure we know what's working.

23

F u n da m e n ta l 4

Optimise with confidence The better you understand what's

driving results, the easier it becomes to optimise campaigns, identify opportunities and prove business impact.

With the right measurement setup, you can move from assumptions to evidence and make decisions with confidence.

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Fundamental 4 •

1

Connect and authorise Google Analytics in TikTok Ads Manager

2

Asset Manager brings your catalog, creative and signals into one unified workspace, helping you identify readiness gaps before they affect delivery and performance.

Google Analytics integration for Sales campaigns makes it easier to optimise TikTok performance to the measurement tools your team already relies on.

Use Asset Manager to:

Advertisers who tested GA4 optimisation saw:

-27 +54 %

reduction in CPA for

TikTok campaigns

%

increase in conversions1

TikTok internal Alpha test, TTAM-GA4 Optimization / GA Optimization, 115+ advertisers with observed performance improvement.

Monitor readiness

with Asset Manager

Review asset quality and delivery readiness Identify gaps with

smart recommendations Monitor catalog, creative and signal health in real time

25

Fundamental 4 •

3

Marketing Mix Modelling

Use the right

measurement method

for the right question TikTok's full marketing ROI is not always visible through basic tracking or lastclick attribution. To understand TikTok's full business impact, combine attribution, experiments and marketing mix modelling (MMM). Together, they help you understand day-to-day performance, incremental impact and long-term business outcomes.

Each measurement strategy is different, driven by unique objectives

and sources of truth.

We meet you where you are, helping

demonstrate TikTok's clear line to business value with a holistic measurement approach.

Attribution

Experiments

Marketing Mix Modelling

Attribution

See the bigger picture.

Track what's happening day to day.

Best for:

Long-term ROI analysis

Budget planning

Channel contribution modelling

Prove what actually drives results.

Best for:

Campaign optimisation

Performance reporting

Understanding conversion paths

Best for:

Measuring incrementality

Validating campaign impact

Testing strategic decisions

Tools:

TikTok Attribution Analytics

View-through Attribution

Multi-touch Attribution

Tools:

Split Tests

Conversion Lift Studies

Unified Lift

Third-party Lifts

Tools:

TTAM end point

API integrations

TikTok-badged MMM partners

Experiments

Now let's ensure your setup is ready for scale.

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Fundamental 4 •

Connect Google Analytics to TikTok Ads Manager for Sales campaigns and use it to support optimisation

Optimise with confidence

Ready to scale?

Use this checklist to make sure your measurement setup is giving you the visibility, diagnostics and proof you need to optimise with confidence.

Use Asset Manager to monitor catalog, creative and signal quality on an ongoing basis

Identify and fix readiness gaps before

scaling campaigns

Use attribution tools to support day-to-day optimisation decisions

Run experiments to validate incrementality and campaign impact

Use MMM to understand TikTok's contribution to broader business outcomes

Ready to start building?

27

conclus ion •

Build it.

Test it.

Scale it.

This playbook has shown you how to put those fundamentals into action. Now it's time to build, test, and refine your setup so it's ready

for whatever shoppers do next.

Start building your setup

Strong commerce performance comes from getting the fundamentals right – and keeping them working together.

When your data, automation, creative and measurement are all connected, your campaigns have everything they need to learn faster and scale with confidence.

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