TikTok ad formats: In-Feed, Spark Ads, catalog ads and Smart+

In short: an online store runs three ad formats in TikTok Ads Manager: In-Feed video (9:16, at least 540×960 px, up to 500 MB), Spark Ads built from an organic video on your profile or a creator's, and catalog ads built from your product feed. Smart+ is a campaign type that picks the audience and placements for you. The daily budget must be above $50 per campaign and above $20 per ad group.

The specs come from the TikTok for Business help center. For every format, this guide says what you set up in the CloudCart admin and what in TikTok Ads Manager. Which European countries have TikTok Shop, how to connect your ad account and how to launch your first campaign are covered in the guide to TikTok Shop and TikTok ads in Europe.

Which TikTok ad formats work for an online store

Four things work for an online store: In-Feed video, Spark Ads, catalog ads and the Smart+ campaign, which can use all three. The first three are ad formats; Smart+ is a way of building the campaign.

Format	What the viewer sees	When to use it	What your store needs
In-Feed video (non-Spark)	A video between other videos in the For You feed, with your name and a button	A new product, a new audience, a video you made for the ad	TikTok Pixel, a product link with UTM parameters
Spark Ads	A real video from a TikTok profile, with its likes and comments	A video on your profile or a creator's that is already getting views	An authorization code from the author, the pixel
Catalog ads (Smart+ Catalog Ads)	Products from your catalog in a carousel or a video, each with its own link	A large range, bringing back people who viewed products	A product feed, a pixel that sends product-level events
Smart+ Web campaign	Any of the formats above, chosen by TikTok	Once the pixel reports purchases and you want TikTok to find buyers	A pixel with purchases, a catalog if you like

In-Feed video: TikTok ad specs and file requirements

A TikTok In-Feed video is vertical 9:16, at least 540×960 pixels, and the file is up to 500 MB. These are the requirements for non-Spark ads on the TikTok Business Help page on In-Feed ads; the Spark Ads column follows TikTok's Spark Ads help page.

Spec	Non-Spark (video uploaded to Ads Manager)	Spark Ads (video from a profile)
Aspect ratio and minimum resolution	9:16 (recommended) from 540×960 px; 16:9 from 960×540 px; 1:1 from 640×640 px	No restriction for organic video: it runs as posted
File type	.mp4, .mov, .mpeg, .3gp, .avi	.mp4 or .mov
Length	Up to 10 minutes	Up to 10 minutes for a video run as a Spark Ad
File size	Up to 500 MB	No restriction
Bitrate	From 516 kbps	No restriction
Ad text	White text in a fixed font; no links, @ mentions or hashtags	Taken from the video caption, up to 4 lines, emoji allowed
Advertiser display name	One line, up to 20 characters	The profile name
Profile image	98×98 px, .jpg or .png, under 50 KB; keep the key part in the central 66×66 px	The profile picture

The display name is also the page title in TikTok's in-app browser, so use your store name. Keep on-screen text out of the bottom and right of the frame, where TikTok's buttons and caption cover it.

If you advertise in several EU countries, make one version of the video per language, so a shopper in Vienna hears German and lands on a German product page in euros.

How to turn a product photo into an 8 to 15 second video with Krea or another AI tool, and what to show in the first seconds, is in the guide to AI video ads for an online store.

What you set up in CloudCart for an In-Feed ad

1. Pixel. In Apps → TikTok Dynamic Ads → Settings, enter the Pixel Code from TikTok Events Manager. The store then sends ViewContent, Search, AddToCart, AddToWishlist, InitiateCheckout, PlaceAnOrder and CompletePayment with price, currency and products.
2. Server events. Add an Access Token and switch on Enable Events API (Server-Side). Email and phone go to TikTok only as SHA-256 hashes. Events API is on every plan.
3. Product link. In TikTok Ads Manager, link to the product page with utm_source=tiktok and utm_campaign set to the campaign name. Without UTMs the store still recognizes the click by the ttclid parameter.

Across the EU, a tracking pixel needs the visitor's consent first. In CloudCart the pixel and the server events both check the cookie banner: if a visitor declines targeting cookies, neither sends anything to TikTok. The full setup is in the guide Meta Pixel, Conversions API and TikTok Pixel in CloudCart.

Spark Ads: ads from a video on your profile or a creator's

Spark Ads are ads made from an organic TikTok video, where the views, likes, comments, shares and follows from the ad go to the original video. The video can be from your own profile or from a creator who gave you permission. Aspect ratio, resolution, file type and file size are unrestricted, the video can be up to 10 minutes, and one ad account supports up to 10,000 Spark Ads, according to TikTok's Spark Ads help page.

How a creator gives you a Spark Ads code

The steps follow TikTok's page on Spark Ads for Smart+ campaigns.

1. Permission on the profile. The creator checks that ads from their videos are allowed in TikTok, under Settings and privacy → Privacy or Me → Creator tools (menus differ by app version).
2. Video settings. They open the video, tap the three dots and choose Ad settings.
3. Authorization. They accept the terms for advertising content and switch on Ad authorization.
4. Validity. They tap Generate and choose how many days the code is valid: 7, 30, 60 or 365.
5. Code. They tap Copy Code and send it to you.
6. In Ads Manager. You open Tools → Creative → Creative library → Spark ads posts, click Apply for Authorization, paste the code and confirm. You can add up to 20 codes at once.

Pick a validity period longer than the campaign and put it in the creator agreement. What else belongs in that agreement and how to label paid content is in the guide to influencer marketing for an online store.

Important: in every EU country, using content to promote a product you paid for without making that clear is an unfair commercial practice in all circumstances (Annex I, point 11 of Directive 2005/29/EC). Ask the creator to mark the video as an ad in their followers' language and to switch on TikTok's paid partnership label before they post it, because the caption cannot be changed later.

Spark Ads rule	What it means for your store
The video caption cannot be edited after authorization	Agree on price, discount code, product name and ad label before the video is posted
A private video becomes public once it runs in a campaign	Do not test with videos you do not want visible on the profile
Smart+ Web does not mix Spark and non-Spark ads in one campaign	Run creator videos in a separate campaign

How to measure sales from each creator in CloudCart

Give every creator their own discount code (Marketing → Discounts, reported in Analytics → Order discounts) and their own link with utm_source=tiktok and utm_campaign set to the creator's name (Analytics → Sales by traffic source). Together the two show which creator sells, even when a buyer types the code later without clicking the ad.

Important: per the plan comparison, "UTM tracking" is included in CC Pro and CC Master. On Baby Pack and Starter Pack rely on the creator's discount code, Sales by traffic source and ttclid, or check your plan with support@cloudcart.com.

TikTok catalog ads with the CloudCart feed and pixel

Catalog ads take images, prices and links from your product catalog and show each person the products they are most likely to buy; the shopper orders on your website. TikTok now calls the former Video Shopping Ads (for Catalog) Smart+ Catalog Ads, and a catalog as the product source does not need TikTok Shop. That matters in Europe: TikTok Shop runs in a limited list of markets, while catalog ads to your own store work wherever you can advertise.

TikTok's requirements for catalog ads: at least 4 products in the catalog that are in stock, approved and active; in the campaign you can choose all products, a product set or up to 20 specific products; at least 6 videos are recommended.

Catalog ad variant	What it looks like	Objective in TikTok
Carousel	Product images from the catalog, each with its own link	Sales; for steady sales, new customers and retargeting
Single video	Your video with add-ons that show products from the catalog	Sales
Catalog video	A video chosen automatically from the person's interest in a product	Sales
Image Catalog Carousel	A carousel of 2 to 10 cards from the catalog	Traffic in the new Smart+

Source: TikTok's page Catalog Ads in TikTok Ads Manager.

Step by step: your CloudCart catalog in TikTok

1. The app. In the admin, install Apps → TikTok Dynamic Ads. It holds both the pixel and the product feed.
2. Variants. In Settings, choose which variant parameter is color and which is size. They become g:color and g:size in the feed, and every variant is a separate row with its own ID, a shared g:item_group_id and its barcode in g:gtin.
3. UTM. On the same screen, set utm_source, utm_medium and utm_campaign, which are added to every link in the feed.
4. Which products. Use the filter to keep only the products you want in ads: by category, vendor, tag or manual selection. Only products with a price go into the feed.
5. Feed URL. Copy the feed URL from the app. It is public, regenerated about every 2 hours and split into pages of 10,000 products.
6. Catalog in TikTok. In TikTok Ads Manager, open Catalog Manager, create a catalog and add products from a scheduled feed: paste the URL and choose how often TikTok fetches it.
7. Connect the pixel. Link the catalog to the pixel from the first step. Store events carry the product ID that matches g:item_group_id in the feed, so TikTok knows which product was viewed and which was bought.
8. The campaign. Sales objective, Website destination, catalog switched on, optimized for purchase. For retargeting, choose an audience of people who viewed a product or added it to the cart.

Weight in the feed is sent in kg or lb, the units TikTok accepts. How to prepare images, descriptions and SKUs once for every channel is on the Sales channels page.

If you sell to several EU countries, the Multilang app runs a sister store per language, each with its own domain and currency, from the same catalog. Each store then has its own feed, so the catalog for your Polish ad group links to Polish product pages with prices in złoty.

Smart+: when to let TikTok run the campaign

Smart+ Web is a Sales campaign to a website in which TikTok looks for an audience beyond the country, language and gender you set and chooses the placements itself. You choose the optimization goal, the bid strategy and the ads (TikTok Business Help: Smart+ Web).

In Smart+ Web	You decide	TikTok decides
Optimization goal	Value, Conversion, Landing Page View or Click
Audience	Country, language, gender (gender only for some advertisers), excluded audiences	Who exactly sees the ad
Placements	Not chosen manually	TikTok, Pangle, Search and Lemon8 (Pangle and Lemon8 only in some markets)
Ads	Videos and images; with a catalog, up to 30 more	Which ads get more delivery; AI suggests extra variants
Spark and non-Spark	Not mixed in one campaign

Smart+ makes sense once the pixel reports purchases every day. Run a manual campaign with In-Feed and Spark Ads first, check CompletePayment in Events Manager and orders in Analytics, then launch Smart+. If you want to exclude Pangle, Smart+ does not allow it, and you need a manual campaign with manually selected placements.

Excluded audiences from CloudCart

Smart+ lets you exclude audiences, and your store supplies the list. Apps → TikTok Ads connects the store to your ad account and builds a TikTok custom audience from a file of customer emails, plus a lookalike audience from it. The file comes from Marketing → Segments: a segment of customers who have already ordered is exported as a CSV and uploaded as an audience. Exclude those buyers from your new customer campaign so you do not pay for people who just ordered. Under the GDPR people can object to the use of their data for direct marketing, so put only subscribers with marketing consent in the file and remove everyone who unsubscribed.

How much budget each format needs

The budget rules in TikTok are the same for every format: the daily budget must be above $50 at campaign level and above $20 at ad group level. With a lifetime budget, the ad group minimum is $20 times the number of days, for example $620 for 31 days (TikTok Business Help: budget).

Stage	Campaign	Minimum under TikTok rules
1. Test the videos	Manual Sales campaign: one In-Feed ad group, one Spark Ads ad group	Campaign above $50 a day, each ad group above $20
2. Bring back visitors	Catalog ads to people who viewed a product	A separate campaign above $50 a day
3. Scale	Smart+ Web with your best videos and the catalog	Above $50 a day, raised by up to 30% every two days

Each country is its own ad group above $20, so start with the market where you already have orders.

How far above the minimum to go is worked back from your average order and margin. The calculation with break-even ROAS examples is in the guide to ROAS and ROI for an online store. Base budget decisions on the orders in Analytics, because TikTok counts purchases by its own attribution window.

What you do in CloudCart and what in TikTok Ads Manager

CloudCart handles the data; TikTok Ads Manager handles the video, the ad and the budget.

Task	In CloudCart	In TikTok Ads Manager
Tracking	Apps → TikTok Dynamic Ads → Settings: Pixel Code, Access Token, Enable Events API	Events Manager: pixel, Test Events
Audiences	Marketing → Segments (CSV) and Apps → TikTok Ads (email audience and lookalike)	Audiences: include and exclude in the ad group
Campaigns and reports	Apps → TikTok Ads: campaign list, budget, pause and resume, spend, clicks, conversions	Creating the campaign, video and ad
Real orders	Analytics → Sales by traffic source (UTM and ttclid)	Conversions by TikTok's attribution

The TikTok Ads app needs an App ID and App Secret from business-api.tiktok.com and has no sandbox, so test with a small budget. Emails to people who bought through TikTok go out from email campaigns in the admin, with no new ad spend.

Mistakes to avoid

• Smart+ from day one. With no purchases in the pixel, the algorithm has no purchase signals and you cannot tell which video sells.
• A creator video without an ad label. Under EU consumer law paid content must be recognizable as advertising, and the caption cannot be fixed once the video is authorized.
• An audience file with unsubscribed customers. Only people with marketing consent go into the file for TikTok.

Frequently asked questions

Questions about the pixel or the TikTok feed? Write to us at support@cloudcart.com.