What Are Brand Takeover Ads?
TikTok brand takeover ads are a unique campaign type that remains only available on TikTok. The new type of campaign can do wonders for helping your brand reach new customers and generate revenue.
A brand takeover ad campaign can only be run by one advertiser per category every day. Additionally, these ads appear immediately when a user opens TikTok, so you’ll have the audience’s attention at an ideal time.
Takeover ads generally focus on increasing brand awareness, but they certainly also strive to make sales. Additionally, regardless of the outcome, you can use other types of TikTok ads to retarget those who saw your brand takeover ad — helping you get even more out of the campaign.
Brief Summary of the Different Types of TikTok Ads
Let’s quickly summarize the primary TikTok campaign types so you can see how brand takeover ads fit into the overall TikTok Ads puzzle. The main campaign types are:
- In-feed video: These ads are the most common type of ad and show up directly in the native news feed for TikTok users, generally on the “For You” feed.
- Video ads: Video ads are a specific ad format that is available with several campaign types.
- Branded AR ads: Banner AR ads let you promote branded lenses, stickers, and other types of AR content to a targeted audience.
- Brand takeover: This unique type of campaign can only be run by one advertiser per category each day. We’ll explore this more in detail below.
- Hashtag ads: These types of ads appear in the “Discovery” section of the app and are ideal for encouraging user-generated content (UGC), and can offer significant reach.
- Spark ads: Spark ads allow advertisers to sponsor organic content from users relevant to the advertiser’s product or service.
- Sponsored influencer content: TikTok has a built-in mechanism that allows you to work with relevant influencers without relying on messaging them individually.
- Carousel ads: Carousel ads appear to allow advertisers to use up to 10 images in ads that will appear on TikTok’s news feed apps: TopBuzz and BuzzVideo.
- Image ads: Similar to carousel ads, an image ad will also appear in TikTok’s news feed apps but will only be a single image.
When Should You Use Brand Takeover Ads?
The goal of a brand takeover ad is to reach new audiences and potential customers who may be interested in your product or service. As such, these ads are generally more focused on brand awareness than going right for sale (although sales can still be made).
You should use brand takeover campaigns when you want to reach a significant number of new users who may have never heard of your company. Take the time to craft original and compelling ads to make the most of your ad spend.
Best Practices for Brand Takeover Ads
Crafting an effective brand takeover ad is crucial to maximizing the campaign results. Remember, this is one of the more unique TikTok advertising options, which means you need to take plenty of time to prepare before running the campaign. A few quick best practices are:
- Keep it short: Brand takeover ads should be user-friendly and engaging. Your ad needs to be concise and to the point to achieve both. A longer ad can work, but you’ll typically want to condense your message to keep it short and simple.
- Make the next step clear: What should users do after they see your ad? Craft a compelling call to action (CTA) for your ad. The CTA can say something like “click here” or “follow us” so every viewer knows what to do if they are interested in the ad.
- Be relevant to your audience: Running a brand takeover ad means you need to choose a category to take over. Choose the right category and craft an ad specific that’s relevant to the category’s audience.
