TikTok Ads: What You’re Missing, What’s New, How to Win

TikTok Ads: What You’re Missing, What’s New, How to Win

If your brand still isn’t on TikTok, you’re leaving attention - and money - on the table. As of early 2025, TikTok now reaches over a billion monthly users globally (and over 4.16 million users aged 18+ in Israel), a milestone the company confirmed. That’s a cultural firehose you can’t ignore.

And it’s not just reach. It’s time. Users spend the most time per day on TikTok among major platforms (47 minutes on average), which is exactly why campaigns that fit the feed can punch far above their weight.

Below is a practical guide to (1) what you miss by staying off the platform, (2) the new AI tools TikTok launched recently, (3) why TikTok Search matters (and how to advertise there), (4) what effective TikTok creative actually looks like, and (5) what executives should do next.

1) Not on TikTok? Here’s what you’re missing

Attention at scale - TikTok publicly passed 1B monthly active users worldwide and 4.16 users in Israel, making it one of the largest consumer platforms on earth. If you sell to under-40s, it’s the bare minimum.

Time spent that outperforms - TikTok leads social platforms in daily time spent - roughly 47.3 minutes/day, translating into more minutes to earn relevance and drive action.

A growing share of search behaviour - Gen Z increasingly starts discovery on TikTok, with multiple studies reporting meaningful adoption of social search among younger users (and growing usage beyond Gen Z). If you’re not discoverable in-feed and in TikTok Search, you’re invisible at the exact moment of intent.

Bottom line - not showing up on TikTok means ceding reach, discovery, and cultural salience to competitors who will.

2) New on Tiktok: The new AI & analytics stack (and how to use it)

TikTok used its 2025 product summit to roll out AI-driven planning and analytics designed to make brand strategy more data-led and creative production more scalable.

Insight Spotlight (within TikTok One)

What it is: An insight hub that surfaces real-time trends, audience behavior, brand perception, and the keywords/videos your target audience is actually watching. It can also generate AI-suggested ad ideas based on those signals.

Why it matters: You can stop guessing which trends to ride and build briefs on what your audience is already engaging with.

How to take it to the edge:

• Category Trend Radar - Make it a quick 15-minute weekly ritual: pull the top trending topics and keywords in your niche, then feed those insights straight to your creators so they can jump on them while they’re hot.
• Competitor Delta - Spot the gaps in how people see your brand versus the competition: whether it’s perception, engagement, or both. Then turn those gaps into “counter-positioning” content that speaks to your audience where they actually are, not where your last strategy deck wishes they were
• Keyword-to-Creative Loop: Export top queries from Insight Spotlight, then mirror the language in hooks/captions to align with TikTok Search (see section 3).

Market Scope (funnel analytics)

What it is: A new analytics layer to understand where users are in the buying cycle and how to activate them across the funnel. Think audience intelligence tied to journey stage.

Why it matters: Most teams over-invest at the top of funnel. Market Scope helps you balance awareness → consideration → conversion with the right creative and placements for each stage.

How to use it:

Creative Mapping by Stage: Match your creative to where the customer’s at - hooks and UGC to grab attention, social proof to build trust, and direct-response offers to close the deal. Then track performance by each stage of the funnel, instead of lumping it all into one blended CPA.

3) TikTok is becoming a search destination - and now there are Search Ads

A growing share of consumers, especially younger ones, use TikTok to search for “best X near me,” “how to do Y,” and product reviews. Multiple studies in 2024–2025 highlight this usage shift toward social search (with caveats around reliability). For brands, this is not theoretical - TikTok now offers Search Ads Campaigns.

What Search Ads Campaigns do? Keyword-based advertising that targets TikTok’s search results page, building on the earlier “Search Ads Toggle.” Advertisers can bid on queries and appear alongside organic results.

Opportunities for brands:

• Intercept intent: Bid on problem, solution, brand, and competitor queries (e.g., “best vitamin C serum,” “how to fix frizzy hair”) and show up with concise, TikTok-native explainer creatives that look like results, not commercials.
• Close the loop with Insight Spotlight: Pull rising keywords, then mirror them in Search Ads to cover both organic + paid discovery.
• Creator-style answers: Pair search ads with UGC-style answers (“Here’s the fix…”) and on-screen proof. This format aligns with how people expect to consume info on TikTok Search.

Social search isn’t perfect; misinformation exists. Your job is to provide fast, credible, visually-demonstrated answers that earn saves and shares.

4) How to launch TikTok campaigns the right way

Most underperforming TikTok ads have the same problem: they don’t look like TikToks. Winning brands do three things:

1. Open strong (0–2 seconds) - Start with a human hook that matches how people naturally talk about the problem (“I wasted $$ on sunscreens until I tried this hack”). Skip brand-first intros; earn the next 3 seconds.
2. Make it feel native - Use on-screen text, jump cuts, captions, comments as prompts, green screen explainers - formats viewers expect on TikTok. The ad should read like a helpful/funny post that happens to feature your product.
3. Ship 5–10 variations, not 1 “hero” - The platform rewards iteration. Use Symphony/AI to generate variants, then let the data pick winners quickly.
4. Tie creative to the funnel:  Awareness: UGC, storytelling, POVs. Consideration: demos, before/after, social proof, creator comparisons. Conversion: promo codes, bundles, “how to buy” walkthroughs. Use Market Scope to read impact by stage and re-balance budget, not just the aggregate CPA.
5. Design for sound-on - TikTok is a sound platform. Captions help, but audio hooks carry.
6. Measure like a scientist - Use Insight Spotlight for topic/keyword direction and Search Ads for high-intent capture. Treat organic + paid as one system. If a topic wins organically, promote the winning variant rather than rebuilding from scratch.

5) What executives should do next (and why)

• Institutionalize trend sensing - Assign a weekly owner to pull Insight Spotlight data (trends, keywords, audience behaviours). Use those insights to brief creative and Search Ads.
• Stand up a creative sprint model - Use Symphony to draft multiple hooks per product claim, test small, scale winners.
• Build a search strategy inside TikTok - Identify your category’s “how to / best / near me” queries and map ad + organic answers to each.
• Mind the governance - If you use AI avatars or AI-generated footage, ensure proper disclosures and brand safety; TikTok labels AI content.
• Budget for learning, not just buying - Because ad dollars still lag time-spent, the brands that iterate creative fastest can capture outsized ROI before the market fully prices in TikTok’s attention.

Final word

Everything here comes from real-world experience - across industries, budgets, and brand sizes. TikTok isn’t an overnight win; it takes time to learn the platform’s rhythm and speak its language. If you’re not there yet, we recommend starting now. If you are there but results aren’t hitting the mark, use this playbook to reset - whether you’re running it in-house or through a partner.