TECH TRENDS

With over 1 billion users, 92 % of whom act after engaging with content, TikTok is vital for marketers in 2025. Its diverse ads, broad reach and innovations like TikTok Search Ads and Smart + are redefining brand engagement and conversions. Sam Shennan, CEO of APAC at Incubeta, discusses how brands can optimise TikTok’ s evolving advertising landscape. He offers insights into TikTok’ s role in overall business growth and shares success stories of various brands.

With over 1 billion users – 92 % of which take some form of action after viewing TikTok content – it has the unique potential to drive sales and increase brand-audience connections, meaning the organisations that invest in and utilise TikTok in line with wider business KPIs will be the businesses that outperform.

The recent launch of TikTok’ s‘ Search Ads’ and‘ Smart +’ only furthers business opportunities, offering enhanced control over search ad placements, allowing for better targeting and campaign management. Already we’ ve seen advertisers that use these features, alongside in-feed ads, achieve a 20 % conversion uplift at a similar, if not lower CPA.

Unmatched flexibility for advertisers

With a diverse set of ad formats and targeting capabilities, TikTok offers unmatched flexibility for advertisers. From in-feed ads that integrate into the user’ s organic feed, to branded hashtag challenges and effects, advertisers can include call-to-actions that lead to landing pages or app downloads or amplify organically through branded features.

The introduction of TikTok Search Ads has only accelerated the platform’ s versatility. This feature enables increased user intent targeting, allowing businesses to target consumers actively seeking out products or services in their search queries. This is significant considering 57 % of TikTok users tap the application’ s search functionality, with 23 % searching for something within 30 seconds of opening the app. Through keyword-ads, TikTok ensures an SEO-like capability that adds a new layer of precision to TikTok’ s advertising ecosystem.

Additionally, Search Ad’ s allows for easy activation, editing and keyword and creative adjustment – both during campaign set-up and while it’ s live.

This flexibility allows businesses to react to campaigns in real-time – optimising performance and reaching high-intent audiences at crucial moments.

Maximising ROI with smarter spending

TikTok’ s potential ad reach of more than 945 million adults offers a goldmine for ROI. By leveraging advanced budgeting, bidding and creative optimisation tools, smarter spending is easier than ever.

The launch of Smart +, TikTok’ s answer to Google’ s Performance Max and Meta’ s Advantage +, has taken ad performance to the next level, delivering

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