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This page answers common questions about working with TikTok advertising campaigns in Whathead.

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General Questions

TikTok Ads is TikTok’s advertising platform that lets you create campaigns to reach TikTok’s global audience. Ads can appear on TikTok, Pangle (TikTok’s ad network), and other partner apps.In Whathead, you connect your TikTok Ads Manager account to create and manage TikTok campaigns alongside your other advertising platforms.
Yes, you need a TikTok Ads Manager account with access to a Business Center to use TikTok advertising with Whathead. The Business Center is where you manage ad accounts, billing, and team members.If you don’t have one, you can create an account at ads.tiktok.com.
Yes, you can connect multiple ad accounts from your Business Center. After connecting, you can select which ad account to use when creating each campaign.You can also connect multiple Business Centers if you manage campaigns for different clients or businesses.
Both tools let you create and manage TikTok campaigns, but Whathead offers unique capabilities:
  • Visual campaign builder: See your entire campaign structure on a canvas
  • Cross-platform management: Manage TikTok, Meta, Snapchat, and Google campaigns in one place
  • Bulk operations: Edit multiple campaigns faster than in Ads Manager
  • Cross-platform transfer: Copy campaigns between platforms
  • Export capabilities: Generate PDFs and presentations for client reviews
Whathead complements TikTok Ads Manager — you can use both tools together.

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Connection and Setup

To connect TikTok:
  1. Navigate to Integrations in Whathead
  2. Click Connect on the TikTok card
  3. Log in to TikTok Ads Manager and select your Business Center
  4. Grant the required permissions
  5. Select which ad accounts to use
See the Connection Setup guide for detailed instructions.
Whathead requires these TikTok permissions:
  • Ad Account Management: Create and edit campaigns, ad groups, and ads
  • Ad Account Read: View existing campaigns and performance data
  • Business Center Access: Access Business Center and ad account information
  • Creative Management: Upload and manage creative assets
  • Reporting: View campaign performance metrics
These permissions are necessary for Whathead to manage your campaigns. We never access personal data or post on your behalf.
TikTok access tokens expire after a period of inactivity. If you use Whathead regularly, your connection stays active automatically.If your connection expires, you’ll see a notification prompting you to reconnect. Simply click Reconnect and follow the authentication flow again.
Yes, you can disconnect anytime:
  1. Navigate to Integrations
  2. Click Manage on your connected TikTok account
  3. Click Disconnect
Note: Disconnecting removes access to your ad accounts in Whathead, but your campaigns remain active in TikTok Ads Manager.

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Campaign Creation

TikTok offers eight campaign objectives:
  • Reach: Show your ads to the maximum number of people
  • Traffic: Drive people to your website or app
  • Video Views: Get more people to watch your videos
  • Community Interaction: Increase engagement with your TikTok profile
  • Lead Generation: Collect leads through native lead forms
  • App Installs: Drive app downloads and installations
  • Conversions: Drive specific actions on your website or app
  • Product Sales: Promote products from your catalog
Choose the objective that matches your business goal. You cannot change the objective after publishing.
TikTok requires a minimum daily budget of **20∗∗forcampaignsandadgroups.ThisishigherthanMeta(20** for campaigns and ad groups. This is higher than Meta (5) and Snapchat ($5).
When transferring campaigns from other platforms to TikTok, budgets below $20/day are automatically increased to meet this minimum.
While $20/day is the minimum, TikTok recommends higher budgets for better performance:
  • Awareness/Traffic: $50/day minimum for meaningful reach
  • Conversions: $100+/day for sufficient optimization data
  • Smart+ campaigns: $50-100/day minimum for effective automation
Smart+ campaigns are TikTok’s fully automated campaign type that uses machine learning to optimize targeting, bidding, and creative delivery.Benefits:
  • Simplified setup with fewer manual settings
  • Automatic optimization across all variables
  • Often delivers better performance with less management
Trade-offs:
  • Less manual control over targeting and bidding
  • Requires higher budgets ($50+/day recommended)
  • Takes 3-5 days to complete learning phase
Smart+ works best when you provide multiple creative variations and use broad targeting.
Yes, you can set start and end dates for campaigns and ad groups:
  1. Open the campaign or ad group node
  2. Navigate to the Schedule section
  3. Set your desired start date and optional end date
  4. Publish the campaign
The campaign will automatically start at the scheduled time.
Start simple and scale based on performance:
  • Beginner: 1 campaign, 1 ad group, 3-5 ads (test creative variations)
  • Intermediate: 1 campaign, 3-5 ad groups (test audiences), 3-5 ads per ad group
  • Advanced: Multiple campaigns, 5-10 ad groups per campaign, 5-10 ads per ad group
TikTok’s algorithm performs best with multiple creative variations. Provide at least 3-5 different ads per ad group for optimal performance.

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Editing and Publishing

Yes, you can edit most fields on published campaigns:
  • Editable: Budgets, targeting, schedules, creative, copy, status, bids
  • Locked: Objective, optimization goal, conversion location
Load the existing campaign into Whathead, make your changes, and republish. Only modified fields are updated.See Editing Existing Campaigns for details.
When you edit and republish:
  • Changed fields are updated on TikTok
  • Unchanged fields are skipped
  • Campaign IDs stay the same (no new campaigns created)
  • Performance history is preserved
Significant changes (like major targeting or budget changes) may reset TikTok’s learning phase, temporarily affecting performance.
Yes, TikTok allows you to update creative (images or videos) on existing ads without creating new ads. This preserves your ad’s performance history and social proof.To update creative:
  1. Load the existing campaign
  2. Open the ad you want to update
  3. Replace the image or video
  4. Publish the update
Note: This is different from Snapchat, which creates new ads when you change creative.
Publishing time depends on campaign size and creative uploads:
  • Simple campaign (1 campaign, 1 ad group, 1 ad): 3-5 seconds
  • Medium campaign (1 campaign, 5 ad groups, 10 ads): 15-30 seconds
  • Large campaign (5 campaigns, 20 ad groups, 50 ads): 1-2 minutes
Uploading new video assets adds extra time. Large videos (100+ MB) can take several minutes to upload.
If publishing fails:
  1. Check the error message to understand what went wrong
  2. Fix the validation errors or missing fields
  3. Retry publishing — only failed entities will be republished
Common issues include budgets below $20/day, missing required fields, invalid creative, or permission errors.See Troubleshooting for detailed solutions.

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Targeting and Audiences

TikTok offers comprehensive targeting options:
  • Demographics: Age (13+), gender, language
  • Location: Countries, regions, cities, or DMA (Designated Market Area)
  • Interests: Categories based on user behavior and content engagement
  • Behaviors: Video interactions, creator interactions, hashtag interactions
  • Device: Operating system, device model, connection type
  • Custom Audiences: Your own customer lists, website visitors, app users
  • Lookalike Audiences: People similar to your existing customers
See TikTok Targeting for details.
Automatic placements (recommended for most campaigns):
  • TikTok shows your ads where they’re likely to perform best
  • Usually delivers better results and lower cost per result
  • Includes TikTok, Pangle, and Global App Bundle
Manual placements (use when you have specific requirements):
  • You control exactly where ads appear
  • Useful when creative is optimized for specific placements
  • Requires more monitoring and optimization
Start with automatic and switch to manual only if you have data showing specific placements work better.
Pangle is TikTok’s audience network — a collection of third-party apps and websites where your TikTok ads can appear. Pangle extends your reach beyond TikTok’s platform.Benefits:
  • Broader reach and more impressions
  • Often lower cost per result than TikTok placement
  • Access to users who don’t use TikTok
Considerations:
  • Creative must be compatible with various app formats
  • Less brand-safe than TikTok’s curated environment
  • Performance may vary by app
Enable Pangle when you want maximum reach and have flexible creative.
Start broader than you think:
  • Too narrow: Limits reach, increases costs, slows learning
  • Too broad: May waste budget on irrelevant audiences
  • Just right: At least 100,000-500,000 people in your target audience
TikTok’s algorithm works best with broad targeting, especially for Smart+ campaigns. Let the algorithm optimize delivery, then narrow based on performance data.

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Budget and Bidding

Campaign Budget Optimization (recommended):
  • Set one budget for the campaign
  • TikTok automatically distributes budget to best-performing ad groups
  • Usually delivers better results with less management
Ad Group Budgets:
  • Set individual budgets for each ad group
  • More control over spending per audience
  • Requires more monitoring and manual optimization
Use Campaign Budget Optimization unless you have specific reasons to control ad group budgets separately.
TikTok offers several bid strategies:
  • Lowest Cost (recommended for most): TikTok optimizes to get the most results with no bid cap
  • Cost Cap: You set a target cost per result
  • Bid Cap: You set a maximum bid
Start with Lowest Cost and switch to other strategies only if you have specific cost targets based on your business metrics.
Recommended starting budgets:
  • Testing: 20−50/daytotestcreativeandaudiences(TikTokminimumis20-50/day to test creative and audiences (TikTok minimum is 20)
  • Awareness/Traffic: $50-100/day for meaningful reach
  • Conversions: $100-200/day to generate enough data for optimization
  • Smart+ campaigns: $50-100/day minimum for effective automation
TikTok’s algorithm needs sufficient conversion data to optimize effectively. Budget accordingly based on your expected conversion rate.
Yes, you can increase or decrease budgets anytime:
  1. Load the existing campaign
  2. Update the budget at campaign or ad group level
  3. Publish the update
Tip: Increase budgets gradually (20-30% at a time) to avoid disrupting performance. Large budget changes may reset the learning phase.

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Performance and Optimization

The learning phase is when TikTok’s algorithm is gathering data to optimize your ad delivery. During this phase:
  • Performance may be unstable
  • Costs may be higher
  • Delivery may be inconsistent
Ad groups typically exit learning after about 50 conversions (usually 7-14 days). Avoid making changes during learning, as this resets the phase.
Best practices for timing changes:
  • New campaigns: Wait 3-7 days before making significant changes
  • Budget increases: Can be done anytime, but increase gradually (20-30%)
  • Targeting changes: Wait until ad group exits learning phase
  • Creative changes: Add new ads rather than replacing existing ones
Frequent changes reset the learning phase and disrupt performance.
Performance drops after editing are common because:
  • Changes reset the learning phase
  • New targeting may be less effective
  • Budget changes disrupted delivery
  • Algorithm needs time to re-optimize
Wait 3-7 days for performance to stabilize. If it doesn’t recover, consider reverting your changes.
Key metrics to monitor:
  • Cost per result: Is it within your target?
  • Conversion rate: Are people taking action?
  • ROAS (for sales): Are you making more than you’re spending?
  • Video completion rate: Are people watching your videos?
  • Engagement rate: Are people interacting with your ads?
Compare your metrics to your goals and industry benchmarks. TikTok Ads Manager provides detailed performance data.

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Assets and Creative

Images:
  • Formats: JPG or PNG
  • Max size: 10 MB
  • Min resolution: 640 × 640 pixels
  • Recommended ratios: 1:1 (square), 9:16 (vertical)
Videos:
  • Formats: MP4, MOV, MPEG, AVI, or 3GP
  • Max size: 500 MB
  • Duration: 5-60 seconds (9-15 seconds recommended for best performance)
  • Min resolution: 640 × 640 pixels
  • Recommended ratios: 9:16 (vertical), 1:1 (square)
Vertical video (9:16) performs best on TikTok as it fills the entire screen and feels native to the platform.
Yes, once an asset is in your TikTok media library, you can use it in multiple campaigns and ads:
  • Assets are stored at the ad account level
  • You can use the same image or video in different ad groups
  • No need to upload the same file multiple times
This makes it easy to maintain consistent branding across campaigns.
You can upload assets in two ways:
  1. During ad creation: Click Upload New when adding creative to an ad
  2. Bulk upload: Go to Assets > Media Library and upload multiple files at once
Uploading in advance speeds up campaign creation, especially for large video files.
Spark Ads let you promote organic TikTok posts (your own or creator content) as ads. Unlike regular ads, Spark Ads:
  • Retain social engagement (likes, comments, shares)
  • Feel more native and authentic to users
  • Can leverage existing popular content
  • Require authorization from the post creator
To use Spark Ads, you need to authorize the organic post in the TikTok app, then select it when creating your ad in Whathead.
TikTok reviews all ads for policy compliance. If your creative is rejected:
  1. Check the rejection reason in TikTok Ads Manager
  2. Review TikTok’s Advertising Policies
  3. Update your creative to comply with policies
  4. Replace the creative in Whathead and republish
Common rejection reasons include prohibited content, misleading claims, low-quality video, or copyright violations.

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”What If” Scenarios

Deleting a parent node also deletes all child nodes:
  • Deleting a campaign deletes all its ad groups and ads
  • Deleting an ad group deletes all its ads
If the entities are published on TikTok, deleting them in Whathead does NOT delete them from TikTok. You’ll need to archive or delete them in TikTok Ads Manager separately.
If you disconnect your TikTok account:
  • You lose access to your ad accounts in Whathead
  • Campaigns on the canvas remain but cannot be published
  • Your campaigns continue running on TikTok (they’re not affected)
You can reconnect anytime to regain access.
You cannot change the objective on an existing campaign. If you need a different objective:
  1. Create a new campaign with the desired objective
  2. Copy your ad groups and ads to the new campaign
  3. Publish the new campaign
  4. Pause or archive the old campaign
Moving an ad to a different ad group (reconnecting) creates a duplicate ad on TikTok:
  • TikTok doesn’t allow changing an ad’s parent ad group
  • Whathead creates a new ad under the new ad group
  • The original ad remains under the old ad group
You’ll need to pause or delete the original ad manually if you don’t want both running.
Whathead handles partial success gracefully:
  • Successful campaigns are published and marked as complete
  • Failed campaigns show error messages
  • You can fix errors and retry only the failed campaigns
  • Successful campaigns are automatically skipped on retry
When transferring campaigns between platforms:
  • Budgets below $20/day are automatically increased to meet TikTok’s minimum
  • Targeting options are mapped to TikTok equivalents where possible
  • Some Meta-specific features (like Special Ad Categories) don’t transfer
  • Creative assets are copied to TikTok’s media library
  • You’ll need to review and adjust settings before publishing
See Cross-Platform Transfer for details.

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Still Have Questions?

If you didn’t find your answer here:
  1. Check the TikTok Troubleshooting guide for issue-specific solutions
  2. Review TikTok’s Business Help Center for platform-specific questions
  3. Contact Whathead support with your specific question

Troubleshooting

Resolve common TikTok issues

Publishing Workflow

Learn about the publishing process

Connection Setup

Review connection requirements

Campaign Structure

Understand TikTok’s hierarchy