TikTok Search Ads & The Brand Risk

TikTok launched its search ads yesterday (September 24th) in US for "scale and performance"

It will show ads against video and image carousels - you can send traffic to your site or connect conversion goals.

So What Are TikTok Search Ads? Think as similar to branded keyword search like on Google & Amazon.

This is the example of how TikTok Search ads will work 

TikTok is already a home for social discovery and TikTok will strive to make search results a natural home for paid ads.

Social To Search: TikTok Social ads are connecting brands to moments and trends, now brands can match ads within search and pre-loaded search against keywords they want to appear against (think brand search and product/SKU searches).

UGC Gift & Curse: TikTok has the scale and the volume on content but the issue it will face as YouTube did for a long time is whether it can be a brand-safe environment and offer protection for brand searches and what content will appear. TikTok being almost fully UGC has large quantities of complaints and fake videos and brands will not want to find out the hard way that because its brand was mentioned or tagged doesn’t mean it will want these videos to appear next to their ad.

Something that will encourage TikTok is the reported stat that “72% of Gen Z said when "googling they are searching TikTok” and its influence on the younger generation.

I predict that many brands will flock to the service to protect their brand but will be shocked at what will come and appear in TikTok searches & TikTok will have to do everything in its power to reduce low quality and fake videos impacting brands and their searches.