TikTok Ads For Music Walkthrough

Let's walk through the process of setting up a campaign for music using TikTok Ads. This is a quick run-through so you can see the interface, get a feel for the flow, and familiarize yourself with the terminology and how it all works. 

We have Discount on TikTok Ads - Dollar for Dollar Match

Advertising Objective

Set this to Sales. Even though it says sales, it’s a way to optimize for any key Objective, from clicks to streaming platforms from a Release link, to email sign-ups, and more.

Campaign Details

Campaign Name - Give your campaign a descriptive name. It’s important to keep your records clean, so if it’s targeted to a specific country or audience, include it in the name. That will make it easier to identify as the number of campaigns you run grows.

Special ad categories are for people running political ads and other complicated stuff that ruffles society’s feathers.

Budget Strategy

Campaign Budget splits your budget evenly across all ad groups. Based on performance, the budget shifts to whichever group has the best performance.

Ad Budget allows you to dedicate individual budgets to each campaign. No matter how one ad group performs in comparison to another, they’ll spend the same.

Ad Group Name - Same rule applies as with the Campaign Name; make it descriptive.

Optimization and bidding

Optimization location - where the ad should direct traffic: your website or a makeshift website that keeps users on TikTok. 

We’re sending traffic to our website/release link, but there are reasons why you'd send them to an Instant page provided by TikTok, which we highlight in our advanced breakdown on page two.  

Optimization Goal - We set this to Conversion, which is a completed goal.

Data connection - this is the Pixel for the property you’d like to track. If you don’t have a Pixel, that’s set up in Events Manager.

Optimization event - The goal of the campaign. This can be an email sign-up identified by a hit to a success page, a click on a specific button like a link to a DSP, or even a certain amount of time spent on the page.

Our Smart link/Release link classifies all buttons linking to DSPs under “Click Button” which we set up in Events Manager. Any click to any DSP will be counted as a conversion, but we can also specify clicks to specific DSPs.

Bid Strategy - This is how your ad spend optimizes. If you set a target cost per result of $0.87 and your campaign reaches that amount without a conversion, it will stop running. Highest volume allows you to get the most conversions no matter the cost. The cap is your daily budget. If you’re spending $100 a day and you only get one conversion, you’ll pay $100 for that single conversion.

Attribution Window - this identifies when the ad should get the credit for conversions. If someone takes more than 7 days to convert, the ad won’t be credited if that’s the limit set.

Event Count - counts every instance, so if one person converts multiple times, each time would be counted vs. only counting multiple conversions from multiple visitors. 

Budget and Scheduling

Run ad group continuously - the ad runs until you stop it. If you forget to stop it, cost could skyrocket if you’re letting it run on a daily budget.

Set start and end date - the campaign will end on the end date.

Advanced Targeting

Restrict who should be shown the ad by: 

• Country
• Age
• Gender

Automatic Targeting Guidance - Let TikTok's AI system manage things and suggest who should see the ad. 

Custom Audiences - Take complete control and set strict rules. 

Interest and Behaviors - Find users based on what they’re consuming. Select Creator Interactions and Music to target users consuming content from music creators, or Video interactions to target users watching videos about Music. In our Facebook ads vs. TikTok ads comparison, we discuss why this is a major difference. 

Placement

There's only one place to show the ad on TikTok as of right now, so not much to do here. 

Turn off video downloads - advertising music and hoping to drive traffic off-platform doesn't work if people can download the song. 

Ad setup

Ad name - Keep it descriptive. 

Create Ads section

Destination URL - input your Release link URL

Hit preview - Test the URL to make sure it loads properly, and you don't get any errors. 

Upload media

Select an identity - the TikTok account the ad should be linked to. This is the account that gets the engagement and followers.

You're done 

At this point, you know how to create a TikTok ad campaign.

You know how to upload a video, choose an objective, set a budget, and launch an ad.

The problem is that knowing how to launch an ad and knowing how to launch a profitable ad are two very different things.

Most artists never get past the first stage.

They create a campaign, spend some money, get a few clicks, and then wonder why nothing happened.

The difference usually comes down to tracking, data ownership, audience targeting, and understanding what the numbers are actually telling you.

That's where things get more interesting.

On page 2, we're going to walk through the setup I use when running TikTok campaigns for music, including release links, pixel tracking, conversion optimization, audience targeting, and how to determine whether an ad is generating genuine listener interest or simply buying cheap clicks.