TikTok ads tactics

Make many organic creator videos (multiple creators, multiple hook styles), then put the platform minimum behind each one rather than judging by organic views, since good videos sometimes flop on timing or the algorithm. TikTok: ~20 creatives at the $20 minimum each, can switch off after ~$5; Meta: 30-40 creatives at ~$1 each since it is easier to duplicate. Judge within hours on top-of-funnel clicks only: most get 0-2 clicks, one gets 5-20. Keep spending on that one to see whether it was a fluke, then track it down to purchases and make variations (change the first or last second). Mid-virality videos (top 25%) often convert better than the most viral, clickbaity ones. For a $5K starting budget he'd spread it over as many hypotheses as possible, aiming for 100 variations, and compress '500 videos' of learning into a week. Test the same creative across Google, YouTube, Meta and TikTok; one platform can give 2x results.

Test ~500 ads per week; run the tests in countries with similar conversion rates but low CPMs (e.g. Indonesia) at ~$10/day instead of ~$1,000/day at US CPMs, then scale winners in the US.

Brought PhotoRoom's three in-house ad creatives to the Outernet on campaign day; they recorded content that was repurposed for paid ads, social posts and LinkedIn (TikToks reposted on LinkedIn). Advice: always factor UGC/online distribution into any offline activation to get ROI.

For health, fitness and productivity apps, the first week of January is 'the Super Bowl / Black Friday' of results: average cost per download is about half the rest of the year. Spent ~75% of the annual ad budget in the first month; the rest of the year was for testing creators and concepts to rerun in January. January spend set a new MRR/ARR baseline for the company each year.

Before the app was finished, co-founder Leo built a tappable fake of the app in ProtoPie (PowerPoint-like, not real code) and filmed it on a phone as a TikTok demo: a real texting scenario with Bro floating over the conversation. They posted it on the brand TikTok account and bought ads on it for fast reactions instead of waiting months for organic UGC. Roger frames ads as the tool for early feedback, not for scaling (paid gets pricier as you scale); a few thousand dollars is cheap next to weeks of building blind. Two outputs: at least one format that works, and a read on whether people want the product.

After TikTok organic, ran Meta ads on Instagram using creatives that had already performed organically. Reasoning: on TikTok you don't control who sees a video, so if a general audience engages, the video itself is strong; putting spend behind it and targeting the exact audience you want should give very low CPIs. One organic video (out of 20-30 on the same angle) was repurposed and ended up taking ~70% of spend.

Worked with a few influencers; the main one, 'Defund Simping', promoted the app hard in his organic videos. Those videos were then repurposed as ads that ran on his page to his familiar audience. Controversial videos that drew lots of comments performed best as ads. Scaling hit a creative shortage because only one influencer produced videos, and dating influencers are scarce since the app competes with their own coaching offers.

The studio runs many creators (girls and guys, a range of ages) on many formats for its astrology app Astra and Bible study app Haven, e.g. a creator describing how Astra helped them find their sign vs a creator showing off astrology knowledge and citing Astra as the resource. Formats that win organically are sparked into paid ads.

First proper paid campaign: make a bunch of TikTok ad videos and scale the ones doing well, for an app concept no one else had built yet.

Rank candidates by comment sentiment (e.g. 'what is that app?') first, then engagement rate, then average views. Spark when engagement is above ~7.5-10% or a video does 3-5x the account's average views. Let organic climb first: if still gaining (e.g. 100K/day) wait 1-2 days. Start with ~$20 (SideShift runs $50-100/day per video for a week); keep running while CPMs don't rise; CPMs usually rise when engagement falls from ~15% to ~5%, then kill it. Exclude sparked views from creator view bonuses. Can add an app-install anchor to track CPI. Spark can also be targeted by country/language/age.

Level 1: every video in its own ad set with $10-20; shut off after $5-10 if clearly off-target; after 1-2 days and $20-40 of promising spend it graduates. Level 2: ad sets (or a CBO campaign in parallel) with 4-5 videos and $100-500, tested against the same lower-funnel or download targets at bigger spend. Level 3: the 1-2 that rise to the top become evergreen campaigns taking ~90% of spend. Never turn off working level 1/2 ads, so one video may run at all three levels at different spend.

Dec 25 is dead. Dec 26-28: start testing (e.g. $5-10K/day) to find the best ~10 videos, expecting ~2x better performance on Jan 1-2. Dec 28-30: conversion quality jumps, raise daily spend across videos. If Jan 1 falls on a Thursday/Friday, expect a smaller jump; the peak is the first Sunday (Saturday night into Sunday morning), when you 10x spend if early signals are good. Year-round, Sunday-Tuesday are the best days for health/fitness/productivity ads and the 1st-3rd of each month converts subscriptions better; time launches accordingly.