TikTok Publishes New Report on the Capacity to Drive Offline Sales via TikTok Ads

We all know that TikTok is the social platform of the moment, and we’ve all seen its massive growth numbers, underlining its popularity, particularly among younger audiences. But is TikTok actually effective for advertising, given TikTok ads are so easy to skip – and in particular, are TikTok campaigns able to drive offline, in-store transactions as a result of exposure and increased brand awareness?

That’s what TikTok sought to clarify via a recent set of studies, in collaboration with Nielsen, which utilized marketing mix modeling analysis to determine the offline sale lift that TikTok campaigns can drive, which could provide some more perspective for your approach.

Nielsen analyzed 16 ad campaigns from brands across North America, Europe and Southeast Asia, with a focus on determining the optimal approach for driving offline sales.

Here’s what they found:

First off, the data showed that TikTok ads drive solid ROI for CPG brands, as well as stronger ‘sales efficiency’ – i.e. how long it takes to see in-store return from your campaigns:

“The US, for example, saw a 14% higher paid media ROAS versus all digital media measured in the models and 2X the offline sales efficiency, while the numbers for Europe and Southeast Asia were even higher.”

That makes some sense – with TikTok being so popular right now, you could see how the right campaigns could connect a brand to that hype, and boost awareness, and response, based on in-app pushes.

Nielsen’s study also looked at which types of content worked best for driving audience response, and found that in-feed video was the most efficient ad type. Which, again, is not overly surprising, given the limited amount of TikTok ad options on offer – but the data also showed that advertisers could actually boost their ad placement in the app to see better results.

In other words, brands could run more campaigns, and work to push their branding on TikTok even harder, and still see the same levels of effectiveness. That could help to maximize your brand awareness push, and tap into the popularity of the app.

Finally, Nielsen also used its in-store Sales Lift methodology to determine the specific capacity for TikTok ads to generate in-store sales for CPG brands:

“Among the 16 commissioned studies, 14 generated significant sales lift. The average ROAS for these studies was 2X the NCS median campaign performance benchmark.”

Again, given the broader popularity of the platform, these results are not overly surprising, and really, all they effectively show is that brands who are able to latch onto the trending styles and formats of the platform, which then reflects on their products, see a positive sales boost as a result of getting it right.

Getting it right, however, does take time and dedicated effort. If you want to win on TikTok, you need to understand the key trends of the app, the popular content formats, and make content that looks native, and aligns with the presentation of in-feed videos.

If you can get those elements right, the data shows that your business can benefit from the reflected glow of the app’s trending popularity, in various ways.

You can read TikTok’s full offline sales impact study here.