TikTok ad automation to use in 2024: Our Top 5

In the dynamic landscape of digital marketing, TikTok has rapidly emerged as an indispensable part of every team's paid social strategy. With its unique blend of viral trend and songs, advertising on TikTok has proven to be a game-changer, leading brands to confidently increase their ad spend on the platform.

However, as much as we're drawn to the creative part and the potential reach of TikTok campaigns, there's an unspoken truth we all confront—running these ads often involves a hefty amount of manual, tedious work.

From setting up campaigns to adjusting bids and scrutinizing analytics, the back-end non-value work can be as monotonous as it is time-consuming, rarely sparking joy among team members. Yet, these tasks are essential for the seamless operation and success of your advertising efforts.

Here's the truth: much of this non-value-added labor can be streamlined and automated, opening up a wealth of opportunities for teams to reallocate their time to more strategic and creative projects.

As ad spend on TikTok continues to grow, let's explore how we can replace the repetitive tasks with automations by Kitchn.io that not only save precious time but also enhance campaign performance, allowing your team to stay ahead in the fast-paced world of paid social. We have collected the top 5 automations that can save your team hours, if not days of work.

Automating TikTok Ad Upload

Creating and managing TikTok ads can sometimes feel like navigating a labyrinth of downloading, uploading and copy-pasting. In this era of smart tools and automation, the process doesn't have to be a manual marathon. Imagine a world where Google Sheets, Monday.com, Asana, Airtable, and even your favorite cloud storage like Dropbox or Google Drive become your command center for launching TikTok campaigns. Here's how you can do it with Kitchn.io.

Direct Video Uploads from Cloud Storage

No more juggling between platforms. Your carefully crafted video assets, which are being stored in Dropbox or Google Drive, can be uploaded directly into your Tiktok ads manager. This not only centralizes your assets but also automates the monkey task of creative uploads, ensuring that your latest produced TikTok is just a few clicks away from going live.

Integration with Your Favorite Tools

Whether you’re a spreadsheet wizard or a project management tool enthusiast, your preferred platform can be the launchpad for your TikTok ads. Create your campaign structure within Google Sheets or organize your workflow in Monday.com, Asana or Airtable. The key is to allow you to create and manage ads without ever opening TikTok ads Manager, which can be slow and buggy. This is how you can do it with Kitchn.io:

1. Create Your Spreadsheet and Set Up Automations

   Set up your template, tailored for ad creation. It can be based on one of the integrations — be it Google Sheets, Monday.com, Asana, or Airtable— and will connect directly to TikTok's ad platform.

2. Export and Use Adgroups

   Easily export your ad groups into your tool of choice. Here, you can launch ads into the new adgroups or launch new ads into existing ones

3. Manage Identities Efficiently

   Export all available identities to your template for seamless selection. This will ensure your ads are perfectly aligned with the correct TikTok profiles associated with your account.

4. Handle Your Video Assets with Ease
   • For existing videos, you can run an export that places them neatly in your template, ready for selection.
   • Uploading new creatives? You can easily set up an automation that pulls videos straight from your designated Google Drive or Dropbox folder into your TikTok ad account, all reflected in the same template.

5. Fill, Run, and Launch

   With your template populated with all necessary data, it's time to create. Set your commands and run the automation. This will turn every filled row or card into a live ad!

The beauty of the automation is that it takes around an hour to set up, but can definetely save your team a bunch of time and simplify what was once a daunting task. Each action is designed to be intuitive, with most fields being self-explanatory and a setup that's virtually hands-off once the initial configurations are complete, so even your non-technical team members can do it!

TikTok Ads Creative Reporting

For TikTok ads, creative reporting elevates the creativity of your team, turning raw data and visuals into actionable insights. This automation is about generating comprehensive, but visually appealing reports that blend performance metrics with visual elements, offering a more nuanced view of your ads performance and closing the feedback loop between your creative and media buying teams.

Creating a Visual Library

The first step is to generate a library of screenshot, of all the ads that had impressions in a certain period of time. These visuals are not just for aesthetics - they offer a glimpse into the actual appearance of your ads in users' feeds. The automation will always check for the new ads and existing screenshots to avoid duplicates, ensuring your library is clean.

Gathering Performance Data

With your visual library in place, the next step is to pull in performance data from Facebook insights at the ad level. This data is automatically updated, typically every morning, providing fresh insights regularly.Default settings usually cover crucial metrics like spend, impressions, outbound clicks, but you can easily customize it. Moreover, you can combine this data with some of your custom data sources. These are the numbers that tell the story behind each creative.

Navigating the Report

The report doesn't just present raw data, it calculates KPIs like CTR, CPC, CAC, CVR, ROAS, and the Thumbstop Ratio.The beauty of this report lies in its flexibility. You can filter data by campaign, ad group, or even time periods, allowing for a tailored analytical approach. The spreadsheet itself is intuitively organized, with data manipulation and helper sheets aiding in more complex analyses.

Customization and Clarity

Though most of the work happens in the background, the report tab is where the magic unfolds. Here, editable fields allow you to drill down into specific campaigns or ad groups, or take a step back. The option to determine the number of ads visible in the report tailors the data to your immediate needs, whether it's a deep dive into a particular campaign or an overview of broader performance trends.

In summary, creative reporting for TikTok ads is not just about number crunching, it's about combining together visuals and data..

Campaign Management with Rule-Based Automation

When managing TikTok campaigns, precision and timing are key. Rule-based automation is a game-changer in this context, allowing you to set specific parameters for ad performance, which in turn trigger automated actions based on those criteria. This set of automations explores how to use the power of custom data to optimize your campaigns efficiently.

Defining Your Rules

Define the specific ads to which these rules will apply. This could range from a selected few ads to your entire campaign or even account, depending on your strategy. Then, set conditions based on performance metrics, CPC or CPA, engagement rates, or other relevant KPIs. These conditions will determine when your pre-set actions, like pausing or activating ads, are triggered.

For a more tailored approach, you can incorporate custom data sources or multiple conditions. In such cases, our Customer Success Manager can provide additional support and customization.

Scheduling and Notifications

Schedule the automation, specifying the days of the week and times of day when these rules should be active and select a notification channel and a spreadsheet to log all actions taken by the automation. This ensures you're always in the loop about the changes being made automatically in your campaign.

Running the Automation

Once everything is set up, run the automation. It will then operate according to the schedule and parameters you've set, taking actions like pausing ads that exceed a certain CPC threshold or activating ads under specific conditions.

For instance, you might set a rule to pause all ads if the CPA exceeds a certain amount. Once implemented, the system continuously monitors your ad performance, ensuring that your campaign remains cost-effective without constant manual oversight.

This level of automation empowers you to manage your TikTok campaigns more efficiently. Instead of constantly monitoring ad performance, you can rely on the system to make real-time adjustments based on the rules you've established.It also offers a balance between control and efficiency, ensuring that your ads perform optimally with minimal manual intervention.

In essence, rule-based automation for TikTok ads is about smart management. By pre-setting conditions and actions, you're effectively putting your campaign on auto-pilot, ensuring it operates within your desired parameters, thus saving time and optimizing performance.

Quality Assurance Automations

Quality Assurance in the realm of TikTok advertising is crucial, ensuring that your campaigns run smoothly and efficiently. With QA automations, you can proactively monitor various aspects of your campaigns, from ad approvals to budget compliance, without the need for continuous manual checks. This part of your automation strategy is about setting up these vital checks to maintain the health of your campaigns.

Notification Configuration

Choose the Slack channel where you want to receive notifications. This step is crucial as it determines where alerts regarding your campaign's QA status will be sent. Then, determine the frequency of the automation checks. By default, checks may occur every hour, but this can be adjusted based on your needs and preferences.

Diverse Use Cases for Thorough Monitoring

Here are a few examples of how it can be applied:

• Destination URL Check: Ensures all your ad links are functional and lead to the correct landing pages. This check helps avoid the ad spend being spent in broken links.

  

• Ad Pixel Monitoring: Keeps an eye on your tracking pixels, ensuring they are firing correctly and capturing the necessary data for campaign analysis.

• High Spend Check: Monitors your campaign spend, alerting you if it exceeds predefined thresholds. This is particularly useful for managing budgets effectively.

  

• High Budget Settings Check: Ensures your campaign settings align with your budget goals, avoiding any unintended overspending.

• Disapproved Ads Check: Automatically checks if any ads have been disapproved, enabling you to make quick adjustments or appeals.

  

• UTM Check: Verifies that your UTMs are correctly implemented across your ads, ensuring accurate performance tracking.

• Automated Changelog: Keeps a log of changes and updates within your campaign, providing a clear audit trail for review and analysis.

By automating these checks, you save time and reduce the risk of human error. The system continuously monitors various aspects of your campaigns, ensuring they adhere to your standards and platform guidelines. Receiving real-time alerts in Slack means you can respond swiftly to any issues, maintaining the integrity and performance of your campaigns.

In summary, QA automations in TikTok advertising act as your digital “watchdog”, vigilantly overseeing your campaigns. They ensure that every aspect of your ad strategy, from URLs to spending, adheres to best practices and your predefined parameters, allowing you to focus more on strategy and creativity.

Ads Scheduling

In the world of TikTok advertising, timing can be as critical as the content itself. Ad scheduling is a powerful tool in your arsenal, allowing you to precisely time your ads' appearance to maximize engagement and efficiency.

This final part of our automation picks focuses on leveraging ad scheduling to synchronize your campaigns with your audience's habits and special occasions like weekends and holidays.

Understanding Ad Scheduling

Ad scheduling enables you to decide exactly when your ads should go live on TikTok. This means you can align ad delivery with peak times when your target audience is most active, enhancing the visibility and impact of your campaigns.

By scheduling ads in advance, you avoid the need for manual intervention, especially during off-hours or holidays. This not only saves time but also ensures a consistent presence on your audience's TikTok feed.

Benefits of Ad Scheduling

• Increased Engagement

  By aligning your ads with your audience's active hours, you enhance the likelihood of engagement and interaction.

• Resource Optimization

  Automating the scheduling process frees up your team's time, allowing them to focus on more strategic tasks rather than manual ad management.

• No work during off hours

  It can be very frustrating to carry your laptop on your vacation or push ads live during your time off, especially when it’s easy to automate!

In conclusion, ad scheduling is a key component of a sophisticated TikTok advertising strategy. It's not just about automating for convenience, it's about strategically placing your ads to resonate with your audience at the right moment. By carefully planning and automating your ad schedules, you ensure that your campaigns are as effective and efficient as possible, maximising both engagement and impact.

Summary

In the fast-paced world of social media marketing, TikTok stands out as a platform rich with potential. To fully harness this potential, we've explored five key automation strategies that can revolutionize how you approach TikTok advertising:

1. Bulk Ad and Campaign Upload

   This automation simplifies the process of creating and uploading ads, turning what used to be a time-consuming task into a few clicks of efficiency.

2. Creative Reporting

   By combining data insights with visual elements, this tool helps in understanding the true impact of your creative content.

3. Rule-Based Engine

   This feature allows for the automation of campaign adjustments based on pre-set performance criteria, ensuring your campaigns are always optimized for the best results.

4. QA Automations

   These checks ensure that all aspects of your campaigns, from ad approvals to URL functionality, are always in top shape, preventing any unforeseen hiccups.

5. Ad Scheduling

   This crucial tool ensures that your ads hit the TikTok feed at the most opportune moments, maximizing engagement and maintaining a consistent brand presence.

Each of these automations offers unique benefits, from saving valuable time to enhancing the overall performance of your campaigns. By implementing these solution, you not only streamline your workflow but also open up new avenues for strategic and creative thinking.

While these automations provide incredible efficiency and effectiveness, it's important to remember the irreplaceable value of human insight and creativity. Automation should be seen as a complement to, not a replacement for, the strategic thinking and creative brilliance that humans bring to the table. Striking the right balance between automated efficiency and human ingenuity is the key to truly successful TikTok advertising campaigns.