Paid advertising on TikTok Ads. Advertising combinations that work

For over a month now, we’ve been actively testing TikTok Ads for ourselves and agency clients.
The results are interesting:
🔸 50% of clients saw a sharp spike in traffic and sales
🔸 The other 50% — either still searching for their “funnels” and unit economics, or have already given up and exited after the first month

My key takeaways:

If you’re launching TikTok ads with only one funnel and expecting stable sales from the first weeks — your chances are 50/50, or even lower.
Why?
TikTok is a new platform for your brand. A new account, empty history, no data and no trained algorithm that knows who responds to your ads.
Users living on TikTok might see you for the first time here. They need time to recognize the brand, develop trust, and feel the desire to buy.
The business and marketing team also need time to find effective creatives, their audience, and fix conversions at all funnel stages. That’s only possible with enough traffic and analysis. I think it goes without saying that analyzing stats based on 100 clicks is pointless.

Who should definitely give TikTok Ads a chance:

• Those for whom Meta works well but is unstable or borderline profitable — an extra traffic source may offer more stability and scaling potential

• Those who’ve already maxed out Meta and Google and can’t grow further without sacrificing profitability

• Those who understand the value of cheap website traffic and can retarget well

• Those playing the long game and building a brand — awareness, reach, trust

• Those who already had some first purchases via TikTok, even if expensive — this signals audience interest, and the product can sell with optimization

• Those who collect a lead base and know how to work it

Who better not waste time and money:

• If you’ve never run Meta or Google Ads before

• If Meta/Google already work profitably and have x2 scaling potential, then scale what’s proven

• If reach, visibility, branding don’t matter to you

• If you don’t work on customer retention

• If your mindset is: “No profit in a week — not interested”. That’s too short for ad ROI

What combinations actually work:

• Direct sales from cold traffic — if your offer is truly competitive, and your AOV and margins allow it

• TikTok Ads — to bring in cheap cold traffic and build top-of-funnel: reach, awareness, demand

• Meta Ads — parallel channel: more expensive but more conversion-focused, also effective for retargeting and pushing users down the funnel

• Google Ads — captures hot demand from users who already saw your brand on TikTok/Meta and are now searching for it

• For e-commerce: promoting bestsellers or seasonal hits on dedicated product/landing pages works better than broad category campaigns

• Catalog ads work too, but shouldn’t be the only campaign in the account — diversity is key

• Drive traffic to your site → retarget via Meta/Google

• Collect lead base → warm them up via email/bot marketing, upsell

• Attract users via samples, promo codes (products), trials (services/software), lead magnets (info products) → content warming → sell the core offer via chat or auto

• Direct sales via TikTok Direct — both as a sales channel and a feedback source

• TikTok traffic to AdsQuiz — sell via manager conversations

The main thing. TikTok is not a free ride. It’s a new (in Ukraine) and cheap traffic source, but it demands systemized effort. You invest in testing hypotheses, and in parallel get reach, subscribers, feedback. It’s not “budget drain” if you have a strategy and know your goal.

If you tried, failed, and dropped the idea — don’t bury it. TikTok users are getting used to ads (remember, there were no paid ads in Ukrainian TikTok for over 2 years), their behavior evolves, seasons shift, and your business capacity may also grow. So if you didn’t get the result now, it doesn’t mean you won’t get it later.

I hope this text helps set realistic expectations and build a working TikTok Ads model for your business.