Can we reuse the videos we already run on Instagram?

Usually not, and it is the fastest way to waste a launch budget. Meta creative is generally built to work with the sound off, often lands in a square or 4-5 frame, and takes its time getting to the point. TikTok is 9-16 vertical, watched with sound on, and something has to happen inside the first two seconds. We would rather adapt the idea than upload the file.

What are Spark Ads and why do you prefer them?

A Spark Ad runs an existing organic post — yours or a creator's, with their permission — as the ad itself. Likes, comments, shares and follows keep accruing to the real post, so the ad carries visible social proof instead of arriving cold. It consistently outperforms studio-built ads here and it is the cleanest way to work with creators, because the post stays theirs. It does require the creator to generate an authorisation code, which is why we arrange rights before the shoot rather than after.

How many videos a month does this need?

More than any other platform. Five to ten new videos a week is normal rather than aggressive, because creative fatigues faster here than anywhere else. If that volume is not realistic for you, the honest recommendation may be to spend the budget on a platform with slower burn until a creative supply exists.

Does a polished, professionally shot ad work?

Rarely, and this is the hardest thing to persuade brands of. Studio polish is the signal that tells people they are watching an advert, and they scroll. What performs is one person, one phone, one room, saying something true. That is not a licence for sloppiness — the hook, the pacing and the on-screen text are worked on carefully. It just means production value is not what is being optimised.

Is TikTok right for a business selling to older or professional buyers?

Often not, and we will say so before taking the work. This platform earns its place when the audience skews younger and the product is visual — clothing, cosmetics, gadgets, food and drink. For a business selling to procurement managers, the same budget will do more elsewhere. Recommending the wrong platform is an expensive way to win an engagement.

Paid Media & Performance

TikTok ads that do not look like ads

Native-style video, Spark Ads run from real posts with the creator's authorisation, and a creative pipeline built for how fast things fatigue here.

From: $400–$2,500/mo
Typical time: ongoing
Usually bought by: Youth brands

What this actually solves

Two things pull brands towards TikTok, and one of them is cost. The price of reaching a thousand people here is often lower than on Meta, and the audience skews young, so for clothing, cosmetics, gadgets and food it is frequently the cheapest attention available. The second is rarer and more valuable — if a video genuinely works, the platform distributes it organically as well as paid, and the same budget effectively does two jobs. No other paid channel gives you that.

What stops a brand here is not the advertising platform, which is comparatively simple. It is that the thing that works here is not an advert. A clean, well-lit, professionally produced spot is recognised as an ad within a second and skipped. What holds attention is a person with a phone showing you something, in a room that looks like a room. Brands with years of investment in polished production find this genuinely difficult, because the instinct built by every other channel is precisely wrong here. Good does not mean tidy. It means real.

That is the gap this service fills. The ad account can be set up in an afternoon. Keeping a supply of native-feeling video coming, week after week, at the volume this platform consumes, is the actual job — and it is why the engagement is priced closer to a creative retainer than to account management.

What we do, and in what order

Account, pixel and event verification. TikTok Ads Manager and Business Center set up, the TikTok Pixel installed alongside the Events API for server-side reporting, and every event fired and confirmed with a real test transaction before a single dollar is spent. Two to three days.
A research pass through what is already working. The TikTok Creative Center is free and shows top-performing ads and trending sounds by category; your own organic account, if you have one, shows which of your posts already held attention. Both are more useful than a brainstorm, and both tell us which formats to write for. Two to three days.
Write a slate of scripts, not a set of ideas. Eight or more, shot by shot with timings marked, each one a different structural approach — a problem shown before the product appears, an unboxing, a before and after, a direct answer to the objection people actually have, one product used in three settings, a customer speaking in their own words, a common misconception corrected, and a comparison that names no competitor. The first two seconds are written and reviewed separately, because that is where the scroll decides whether anything after them is watched at all. Three to five days.
Source creators and secure Spark rights before filming. Through the TikTok Creator Marketplace or direct approach, with the authorisation code arranged as part of the agreement — not requested weeks later when a post has already taken off and the creator has stopped replying. One to two weeks, in parallel with the scripts.
Launch, then rotate hard. Usually a Website Conversions or Product Sales objective, checked daily for the first fortnight, with fatigued creative retired and replaced every week. Winners are not left to run — they are rebuilt into new versions before they decay. Ongoing.

Tools used — TikTok Ads Manager, TikTok Creative Center, the Creator Marketplace, and CapCut, which is the platform's own editor and produces work that fits the environment rather than fighting it.

What moves the price

The engagement runs $400–$2,500/mo and is ongoing, and it sits higher than a comparable Meta retainer for one reason above all others.

How much of the creative burden sits with us. This platform's appetite for new video is the defining constraint. If you have creators under contract and a production process that already delivers, the rate drops towards the bottom of the range. If the scripts, the sourcing, the briefing and the editing are ours, that is most of the work and the rate reflects it.

How many creators are in rotation. Creator management is coordination — briefs, approvals, usage rights, payment terms, authorisation codes and reshoots. Three creators is a manageable rhythm. Ten is a small production operation.

How many markets and languages. Native-feeling video does not survive translation. A second market usually means a second creative track rather than subtitles, and that is priced as such.

What usually goes wrong

Meta creative is uploaded unchanged. It dies immediately and takes the launch budget with it. The frame is wrong, it was built to be understood with the sound off when people here keep the sound on, and it spends its opening seconds establishing a brand rather than giving anyone a reason to stay. Adapting the idea is fine. Reusing the file is not.

Production value is mistaken for performance. The brand commissions a beautiful thirty second film, it is genuinely well made, and it is scrolled past by everyone. Polish is the cue that says advertisement. The uncomfortable answer is that a phone-shot clip of one person talking will usually beat it, and that the money is better spent on more attempts than on higher production on a single one.

Creator rights are arranged too late. A creator's post performs well organically, the brand wants to put budget behind it, and only then discovers that Spark requires an authorisation code the creator has to generate — and that nothing in the original arrangement obliged them to. The moment passes. Usage terms and the code belong in the brief, before anything is filmed.

See where the site stands before you brief anyone.

If the site is already live, start from what it scores rather than from a guess. The audit reports what it checked, what it found, and — the part most tools leave out — what it could not check, and why.

See the website audit Talk about this work

Questions people ask before they commit.

Can we reuse the videos we already run on Instagram?: Usually not, and it is the fastest way to waste a launch budget. Meta creative is generally built to work with the sound off, often lands in a square or 4-5 frame, and takes its time getting to the point. TikTok is 9-16 vertical, watched with sound on, and something has to happen inside the first two seconds. We would rather adapt the idea than upload the file.
What are Spark Ads and why do you prefer them?: A Spark Ad runs an existing organic post — yours or a creator's, with their permission — as the ad itself. Likes, comments, shares and follows keep accruing to the real post, so the ad carries visible social proof instead of arriving cold. It consistently outperforms studio-built ads here and it is the cleanest way to work with creators, because the post stays theirs. It does require the creator to generate an authorisation code, which is why we arrange rights before the shoot rather than after.
How many videos a month does this need?: More than any other platform. Five to ten new videos a week is normal rather than aggressive, because creative fatigues faster here than anywhere else. If that volume is not realistic for you, the honest recommendation may be to spend the budget on a platform with slower burn until a creative supply exists.
Does a polished, professionally shot ad work?: Rarely, and this is the hardest thing to persuade brands of. Studio polish is the signal that tells people they are watching an advert, and they scroll. What performs is one person, one phone, one room, saying something true. That is not a licence for sloppiness — the hook, the pacing and the on-screen text are worked on carefully. It just means production value is not what is being optimised.
Is TikTok right for a business selling to older or professional buyers?: Often not, and we will say so before taking the work. This platform earns its place when the audience skews younger and the product is visual — clothing, cosmetics, gadgets, food and drink. For a business selling to procurement managers, the same budget will do more elsewhere. Recommending the wrong platform is an expensive way to win an engagement.

Often taken together.

Start with the brief, not the invoice.

Send what you are trying to achieve. You get a written scope, a price and a date — or an honest “this is not the right service for that”.

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