TikTok launches Smart+ performance AI tools and brings videos to retail stores
TikTok has announced a new AI-led performance marketing suite that can build campaigns “from A to Z, automated by TikTok and powered by AI”.
The suite, called Smart+, is now available globally. It aims to provide AI-powered solutions for marketers looking to optimise their campaigns at speed.
With Smart+, advertisers can input their assets, budget and targeting goals and let TikTok automate the rest of the campaign set-up, including through the use of TikTok’s creative AI suite, Symphony.
Adolfo Fernández, TikTok’s global head of product strategy and operations, ecommerce, said Smart+ “reduces weeks of guesswork and testing”, allowing advertisers to “spend their time on what matters most to them”.
Fernández highlighted, however, that marketers will retain a high degree of control over what and how they utilise Smart+ tools. Calling the suite “modular”, he said marketers can pick and choose what aspects of campaign planning and creative generation they’d like to automate and retain manual control over the rest.
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The news is part of a broader trend of social media companies developing AI tools to aid marketers’ performance strategies, making it as easy as possible for planners to spend budget and activate campaigns with efficient results.
Last week, Pinterest announced a comparable AI toolkit called Performance+. Meta has also developed a large suit of AI tools this year as part of its Advantage+ programme.
These performance marketing tools are especially useful for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) that make up a large amount of spend on social media platforms and which often have under-resourced marketing teams relative to larger brands.
In the UK, TikTok is targeting these SMEs with a new OOH and digital campaign released on Monday, titled “TikTok Means Business”, aimed at highlighting how small businesses have used the platform to grow their consumer base.
TikTok says there are now 1.5m UK businesses on the platform, 31% of which have a founder under the age of 30.
Measurement tools that don’t ‘undervalue’ TikTok
The social video giant announced Smart+ during Advertising Week New York 2024.
Among a slate of announcements was another automated solution tailored for merchants using TikTok Shop — something that Fernández said can halve campaign set-up time for TikTok Shop sellers to advertise their goods.
In addition, TikTok unveiled a new flagship measurement product that it argues correctly values TikTok’s media effectiveness.
Conversion Lift Studies (CLS) was billed as TikTok’s “gold standard” measurement solution by head of product marketing, measurement, identity and privacy Ann Nguyen.
CLS attempts to identify the relationship between ad exposure on TikTok and consumer behaviour to measure sales that “would not have occurred without a TikTok ad”.
According to Nguyen, studies have shown TikTok is a “highly incremental platform” and that other measurement efforts, such as last-click attribution, have “undervalued” TikTok’s impact in driving return on investment.
For advertisers looking to measure using CLS, TikTok has also announced new privacy-enhancing technology integrations to allow brands to use first-party data “with advanced privacy measures”, including data clean rooms.
TikTok has partnered third parties including AWS Clean Rooms and LiveRamp Clean Rooms to offer the new privacy-centric solutions.
Out of Phone expands to retail shops
Meanwhile, TikTok is also expanding into brick-and-mortar stores via its Out of Phone initiative.
TikTok first announced it would roll out its content across billboards, cinemas and other video-enabled OOH screens at last year’s Advertising Week New York, with global head of distribution, news screens, Dan Page, saying Out of Phone would take TikTok “beyond the palm of our hands and into everyday life”.
At this year’s event, TikTok said the initiative is moving into retail locations.
Out of Phone: Retail will serve as TikTok’s in-store digital ad solution, allowing retailers and brands to showcase content on TikTok in physical stores. The solution is available globally.