TikTok For Business

TikTok For Business is the advertising side of TikTok: an account at ads.tiktok.com that costs nothing to open and is paid for by delivery rather than by subscription. It runs auction ads in the For You feed, TopView and search placements, Spark Ads that boost an organic post, and TikTok Shop campaigns that complete checkout inside the app. Targeting, pixel conversion tracking, the creative library and reporting are all included in the account - the money goes to media and to making the creative.

The floor is set by TikTok, not by your budget. Ads Manager requires more than $20 a day at ad-group level and more than $50 a day where a campaign budget is set, with lifetime ad-group budgets calculated as $20 times the scheduled days; the '$500 minimum' that still circulates in older guides is not the current self-serve auction rule. Above that floor, 2026 benchmarks cluster around a $2.60-6.60 CPM with seasonal peaks nearer $8-10, and roughly $0.30-1.50 CPC, which consistently undercuts Meta's $10.96-14.91 CPM. Cheap distribution is also why it converts for impulse ecommerce: standard campaigns report 0.46-2.4% conversion rates, while Shop campaigns with in-app checkout are reported above 10%.

The catches are creative volume and audience shape, not price. TikTok's own guidance is that polished, TV-style spots underperform, so winning accounts iterate many native variants - agencies quote $3,000-15,000 per finished video, which makes the shoot, not the media, the dominant cost for a small brand; and successful campaigns typically test twenty-odd versions before they find the one that works. Reach skews to viewers under about 35, so categories selling to older buyers get volume without match, and in-app purchase flows depend on TikTok Shop being live in the market you are buying impressions in. It fits direct-to-consumer, app and consumer-media advertisers who can publish short native video continuously; it is a weak first channel for long-cycle B2B lead generation.