About author: Jack Evans brings his extensive experience in digital marketing to the table, specialising in paid social strategies that drive growth for e-commerce and DTC brands.
OK, it’s time to come clean.
We’re all a little bit nosy when it comes to competitor ads on TikTok.
(Feels good to get that off your chest, right?)
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But don’t worry – it’s totally understandable. While we spend a lot of time thinking about our own TikTok ad campaigns, we can’t help but wonder what other brands are getting up to on the platform.
How are they positioning their business offering?
Which product benefits are they leading with?
What type of creative content are they producing?
This isn’t just restricted to your competitors, either. Analysing top-performing video ads on the TikTok platform can help you to adapt your product messaging, identify opportunities for creativity, and react to fast-moving consumer behaviours and content trends.
Fortunately, you don’t need to rely on guesswork to figure out what other advertisers are doing on TikTok.
With the TikTok Ad Library, you can view specific ads that are running on the platform to gather those all-important creative insights. In this guide, we’ll explain how you can leverage this resource to improve campaign performance and collect game-changing learnings.
How do I find top-performing ads on TikTok?
High-performing TikTok ads are successful for a reason – they’re often expertly tailored to the TikTok platform, built to capture attention, and designed to resonate with target audiences.
But who says you can’t analyse these top ads to fuel your own creative strategy?
Reviewing successful ads on TikTok is a fantastic way to optimise your own campaigns – you can gather creative insights that help you to discover new content ideas, refine your product messaging, and maximise the impact of TikTok formats.
Below is a step-by-step guide to finding top performing ads on the TikTok platform:
1. Navigate to the TikTok Creative Center.
2. Hover over the ‘Inspiration’ tab at the top of the page.
3. Select ‘Top Ads Dashboard’ from the drop-down menu.
(Source: tiktok.com)
4. Apply any relevant filters, including location, industry, or time period (i.e. last 7 days or last 30 days.) Click to expand the top-performing ad examples.
It’s as easy as that. Within a few clicks, you can access some of the best-performing TikTok ad examples on the platform, and start gathering insights that can transform your campaigns.
(You’ll even be able to view certain analytics for these ads, such as their likes, comments, shares, and CTR range!)
(Source: tiktok.com)
How to use the TikTok Ad Library tool
The TikTok Ad Library (also known as the TikTok Creative Center) is a brilliant resource for marketers seeking out creative inspiration.
By opening up the TikTok Ad Library, any user with a TikTok Business Account can begin to gather information on the top performing ads. This includes reviewing visual assets, analysing keyword insights, and exploring performance metrics.
The more information you’re able to extract from the TikTok Ad Library, the more insights you’ll be able to leverage for your own ad campaigns.
Let’s explore 3 ways you can use the TikTok Ad Library to refine your creative approach and achieve superior results.
1. Analyse top performing ads on TikTok
Reviewing the best-performing video ads on TikTok will help you to identify the content types, creative themes, and ad formats that are seeing major success on the platform.
Plus, you can also include filters that allow you to focus on the most relevant examples for your business. You might want to review what advertisers in your particular industry are doing or check out which TikTok ads are popular with audiences in your country.
By regularly analysing these top performing ads, you may discover different audio snippets, filming techniques, or content trends that you’d like to apply to your own campaigns!
(Source: tiktok.com)
2. Compare your ad performance with other brands
You can also utilise the TikTok Ad Library to compare the performance of your ads with other marketers.
Firstly, take a look at your own ad performance by accessing the TikTok Ads Manager. You can then click ‘See Analytics’ under any ads in the Ad Library to compare basic metrics.
(Source: tiktok.com)
However, it’s very important to remember that scale is key here.
A global advertiser is always going to attract more followers than a local business, meaning it can be misleading to compare metrics such as likes and comments!
Instead, try to focus on engagement rates (i.e. CTR) rather than total numbers whenever you’re analysing performance, and always keep some perspective if you’re comparing delivery with larger advertisers.
3. Save TikTok ads to your personal Collections
Analysing ads on the TikTok platform can be incredibly useful, but repeatedly searching for the same ads can be a bit of a headache.
Fortunately, you can quickly save ads to your Collections for future reference, making it much easier to find examples you’re interested in.
To save an ad example from the TikTok Ad Library, just tap the star icon that appears in the top right corner of the video. You can then save the video to an existing Collection, or create a new Collection if desired.
How to spy on competitor ads on TikTok
One of the most useful features of the TikTok Ad Library is the ability to analyse ads from your closest competitors.
That’s right. It’s time to spy on your rivals and gather some valuable digital marketing intel – all without the need for any hi-tech gadgets or elaborate disguises.
To start snooping around competitor ads, just adjust the filters in the TikTok Ad Library until you’re seeing relevant ads from your market. You’ll probably want to confirm a specific industry for your search, and potentially even select the location and objective to refine the results.
(Source: tiktok.com)
Once you’ve discovered a set of relevant competitor ads, it’s time to start harvesting those insights.
Think about how your competitors are positioning their products, communicating with their target audience, and filming their video content. Which ad examples are delivering the best results, and how can you adapt techniques for your own campaigns?
While copying your competitors outright is never a good idea, taking inspiration from successful ads is a surefire way to boost performance and optimise your creative strategy.
Where can I find my TikTok ads?
If you want to review and analyse your own TikTok ads, you can quickly access them through the TikTok Ads Manager. From here, you can evaluate the performance of different assets and make any necessary tweaks to your campaigns.
If you’re looking for TikTok ad examples that you’ve saved from the TikTok Ad Library, just click the profile icon in the top right of the Creative Center and select ‘My Collections.’
The TikTok Ad Library is a hugely powerful tool that can be a game-changer for your campaigns.
By assessing top performing ads, monitoring competitor activity, and refining your creative strategy, you can consistently improve performance on TikTok to drive superior returns.
Just remember to keep numbers in context whenever you’re comparing performance, and focus on relevant competitors as much as possible. Best of luck!
Contact us if you’re looking for a Tiktok ads agency.
