TikTok’s 5 best practices for Search Ads

Today’s Social Media advertising rates are giving October surprise: 

↘️ META: $8.67 CPM | ↘️ TIKTOK: $4.78 CPM | ↗️ SNAPCHAT: $9.34 CPM

In this week’s (search-heavy) edition: 

• ⏰ TikTok's 5 best practices for Search ads
• Google tests “expandable” ads for search 🔎
• 🚀 Reddit, Inc. launches supercharged keyword targeting 

But first…

🔗 Is LinkedIn pivoting to video? 

LinkedIn has released data showing that video is now the fastest-growing format on the platform: uploads are up 34% year-over-year. Now, here come the ads:

• LinkedIn just announced new updates to its ads platform, including Live Event ads: for those of you who are using the platform’s video live-stream capabilities, there’s now a 30-second “sneak peak” video unit available, as well as the ability to promote the stream with Thought Leadership ads. 

Meanwhile, the platform is bringing new campaign objectives — including video views, brand awareness, engagement, and website conversions — to Accelerate, LinkedIn’s version of PMax. LinkedIn claims Accelerate is driving 42% lower Cost Per Action compared with traditional campaigns.

The Inside Scoop:🍦 Now Trending in Performance Media

⏰ TikTok is rolling out a set of best practices for TikTok Search Ads, as Gen-Z’s favorite search engine starts to ramp up its ad-serving sophistication. According to TikTok, 61%+ of TikTok users discover new brands and products on the platform—1.5x more than on other socials. Search campaigns are currently available for conversion and traffic objectives, with more to come in 2025—including lead generation.

Here are TikTok’s internal recommendations for how to optimize your Search ads:

• Reminder: TikTok recommends using the search-ad toggle in In-Feed campaigns, citing an average Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) that’s 70% stronger than ad groups with the toggle turned off. They also recommend running a Search campaign alongside a toggle-on In-Feed campaign.
• Use at least 20 words per ad group, up to 1000.
• Frequently review the search term report and add irrelevant terms as negative keywords.
• Start off with broad match. Then switch to phrase or exact matches after exiting the learning phase, if necessary.
• Ad group budgets should be at least 5x the bid price, but a 20:1 ratio is recommended.
• Expect Cost per Click (CPCs) and CPMs to typically be higher than In-Feed campaigns.

⭕ Reddit, Inc. is expanding its search-ad relevance by rolling out new tools for keyword targeting.

According to Reddit, placing ads within specific conversations drives 40% higher conversion volume. To help, the platform is releasing AI-driven audience expansion, placement optimization, and keyword suggestions, as well as the ability to combine multiple targeting options within a single ad group.

🔎 Google is testing expandable ads in Search. This is one that search-ads folks are watching closely, since if it were rolled out widely, it could have a major impact on how users engage with search—and, therefore, how advertisers would need to rethink their search-ad strategies. 

At first glance, it seems like a strange move: In the test, users get a search-ad “headline,” but need to expand the ad to get more information. As SearchEngineLand points out: “It’s unclear why Google would choose to hide ads initially, as this could potentially reduce ad visibility. It also makes for an extra click step for users before seeing whether they have been delivered the right result for their search. Historically, this doesn’t make for a great searching experience.”

One hypothesis: One of Google’s north stars for Search is making ads more interactive — and this does force more interaction, though perhaps at the expense of UX. 

📺 Elsewhere, Google has rolled out a nifty Video Experiments tool that simplifies, streamlines, and accelerates A/B testing to improve your video campaign performance. It’s now available for Video Reach and Video View Campaigns. 

♾️ Meta is deprecating several dozen “unique” metrics at the end of this month, including “unique landing page views,” “unique add to carts,” and “unique purchases.” Their advice: “You can continue to use metrics like reach and unique link clicks, in addition to conversions and conversion value, to monitor your campaign performance.”

🏋️ Meta Brand Lift Study pro-tip: What happens if you need to pause a Meta BLS for more than a day or two? A: Meta recommends ending your test early, and starting a new one once you’re ready to resume. Pausing can be extremely disruptive, so they don’t recommend resuming your original BLS afterward.

🧵 Threads trends, according to IG/Threads honcho Adam Mosseri:

• 😴 TIRED: Rage baiting. Threads lacks two major drivers of engagement. First, Politics (Threads doesn’t promote those conversations). But Threads users have discovered that the algorithm seems wired to reward gratuitous “rage bait” — questions designed to elicit furious responses. Journalist Katie Notopoulos tested this hypothesis and the results proved it out well enough that Mosseri has responded — acknowledging that the platform needs to figure out a way to curb the rage. 
• 🤯 WIRED: Live-Threading? The second major engagement driver that Threads lacks: a reliable ability to highlight real-time posts. Which means Threads misses out on things like breaking news and sports second-screening. In an attempt to bolster active engagement, the platform has announced the release of activity status — a green dot next to a user’s profile image that would alert you when your friends and follows are online. Baby steps.

🐘 The Elephant In The Room: Our weekly poll!

Here in Boston, the group chat has been dominated this week by #TooManyBalls-gate. 

TL;DR: Boston’s new professional women’s soccer team scheduled its long-awaited branding reveal — team name, team kits, team spirit — with a name that nobody liked and a video that many people found offensive. The team has since issued a public apology and pulled the video. Over 1400 people have signed a Change.org petition begging the team to reconsider its name. 

As always, we’re here to help. Crowd-sourced from the many, many threads currently debating this question: What should we call Boston new women’s professional soccer club?

Boston FC

Boston Emeralds

Boston Onion Bats

Boston Storrows

Boston United

📊 Last edition’s poll results: Which 2024 Pinterest It Girl are you dressing up as this Halloween?

🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ Charli XCX

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Kesha 

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Ariana Grande

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 Sabrina Carpenter

🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Olivia Rodrigo 

🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ SZA

Thanks for reading! We’ll be back next week with more tips, tricks, and treats from the addressable universe.