5 of The Best TikTok Ads Examples You’ll Ever See

Why Are TikTok Ads So Appealing to Your Target Audiences?

The best TikTok ads are appealing for many reasons, but some may not be immediately noticeable. 

One less apparent reason is that TikTok ads appeal to target audiences who are not just visual learners. They may be auditory or kinetic learners instead. Everyone falls into one of those three categories. We naturally seek comfortable ways to learn based on our unconscious, preferred learning style.

Another reason is that attention spans have dropped dramatically, thanks partly to the internet. Anyone who worked in digital marketing in the early days was astonished at how fast that happened. The unofficial consensus was that attention spans dropped from 20 seconds to 12 seconds between 2000 and 2010. That shrinking attention span trend has continued. 

According to a 2015 Microsoft attention span study, internet attention spans dropped from 12 seconds in 2010 to 8 seconds in 2015 – that’s shorter than a goldfish’s attention span.

TikTok takes full advantage of shortened attention spans with ads that fit what your target audience wants to see. These ads contain a short morsel of content, so no one watching gets bored. 

Along with other unique factors, that targeted strategy sets TikTok apart from its social media competitors, making it an excellent platform for your short e-commerce brand ads.

Learn to Create Your Winning TikTok Ads from TikTok’s Top Performing Ads

We’ve pulled together examples of TikTok’s highest-performing ads. We’ve previously shown you various top e-commerce brand ads from other social media platforms. 

This time, we decided to feature comparable industry brand ads so you can examine a variety of top-performing TikTok ads in several categories. As you know, statistics for different industry categories and e-commerce brand company sizes differ wildly, so compare “apples to apples” when looking at statistics. 

Please note: The statistical “remain value” indicates the percentage of people who watched the ad to completion, indicating a high interest. Remain value is often overlooked as a key performance indicator (KPI) for TikTok ads.

We hope you’ll be inspired and can incorporate some of these winning techniques in your TikTok ads.

#1

• The Ad: Sneaker Auction Purchase & Fulfillment Success. 
• Statistics: This ad’s remain value placed in the top 1% of its industry average. It got 36,726 Likes, 114 Comments & 83 Shares.
• The Company & Its Brand: WhatNot is relatively new to the online auction business. It’s a community shopping marketplace that calls itself the future of shopping. WhatNot’s app brand holds live-streaming product auctions. Please note: WhatNot is the largest e-commerce company included. Its statistics are wildly different because of its high visibility brand and because it’s in a different industry vertical from the other examples.
• The Product Featured: Live streaming auction app
• What This WhatNot Sneaker Auction Ad Got Right: Anyone who’s bought online worries whether the product they get will fulfill its sales promise. This ad nails that highly anticipated moment. It also hits the attention span sweet spot of 9 seconds. Those reproducible factors are why we included this ad in this group.
• How Your Brand Can Adapt This Style: This ad shows instead of telling by using snippet text that pops on and off the screen. It works for the brand’s target audience. Will it work for you? Remember, showing works for the TikTok platform. Look at how your ads might benefit from elements in this ad. That can help you produce shorter ads that appeal to shortened attention spans.

#2

• The Ad: Elevate Nootropic (Energy) Supplement. 
• Statistics: This ad’s remain value placed in the top 5% of its industry average. It got 762 Likes, 6 Comments & 56 Shares.
• The Company & Its Brand: Avantera is a U.S. nootropic supplement company with two brand products: Elevate and Unwind.
• The Product Featured: Elevate
• What The Elevate Nootropic Supplement Ad Got Right: This is an every-woman ad that looks like a homegrown cellphone video. It features a housewife trying to get her mountain of chores done. She makes it clear what life was like before and after taking Elevate. We see the benefits and features in all learning styles, all within 16 seconds. 
• How Your Brand Can Adapt This Style: Every-person ads work well on social media, particularly on TikTok. Knowing your brand’s target audience is key to these succeeding. Take a lesson from something that didn’t hit the mark by ensuring your brand and company name are highly visible. That way your target audience remembers it.

#3

• The Ad: Superhuman Pre (Workout). 
• Statistics: This ad’s remain value placed in the top 26% of its industry average. It got 163 Likes, 6 Comments & 1 Share.
• The Company & Its Brand: Alpha Lion is an e-commerce company founded by two men unhappy with underperforming performance supplements. The brand is Superhuman performance supplements as well as workout apparel.
• The Product Featured: Superhuman Pre (for pre-workout)
• What The Superhuman Pre Supplement Ad Got Right: This ad knows its target audience and goes straight to the heart of what matters to them. It’s attention-grabbing and entertaining. It looks homegrown, even though it isn’t. 
• How Your Brand Can Adapt This Style: Knowing your target audience incredibly well means you can test unusual short ads that fit the segments in that audience. The statistics show this ad resonated well with Superhuman Pre’s target audience. Ensure your ad clearly presents your brand and product benefits.

#4

• The Ad: Heat Wave Sunglasses vs. Fakes. 
• Statistics: This ad’s remain value placed in the top 51% of its industry average. It got 675 Likes, 12 Comments & 5 Shares. Again, this is a very different industry vertical. Heat Wave is a large custom sunglasses e-commerce brand.
• The Company & Its Brand: Heat Wave Visual offers custom Heat Wave sunglasses with fully customizable lenses, arms, and frames. They offer both prescription and non-prescription lenses. Their product lines also include apparel and parts.
• The Product Featured: Heat Wave sunglasses 
• What The Heat Wave Sunglasses Ad Got Right: This ad has a down-home flavor geared to one or more target audience segments. It nails how flimsy imitation drugstore and gas station sunglasses are by quickly and easily destroying them. It gets that point across quite well in just 17 seconds. 
• How Your Brand Can Adapt This Style: The presenter’s image and video background are consistent with the website’s brand images. That kind of image consistency is vital across platforms. The ad shows that imitating products are inferior. Caution: Be sure you sync sound and video in your ads.

# 5

• The Ad: Mandala Scrubs. 
• Statistics: This ad’s remain value placed in the top 8% of its industry average. It got 354 Likes, 3 Comments & 20 Shares.
• The Company & Its Brand: Mandala Scrubs’ company name and brand are the same. Their product lines include women’s and men’s medical scrubs, with daily needed accessories. The focus is on premium scrubs at a “revolutionary” price point.
• The Product Featured: Mandala Scrubs
• What The Mandala Scrubs Ad Got Right: This is an influencer-style ad that works. The attractive nurse model demonstrates stylish scrubs while highlighting benefits and features quickly and smoothly. The text overlay reinforces her points, so auditory and visual learners instantly get each point. Kinetic learners are attracted to her movements. The low price point is shown under the ad. This is a 20-second ad that’s very engaging.
• How Your Brand Can Adapt This Style: Developing an ad that appeals to all types of learners in your target audience is the goal. You also want to showcase your product well while showing, telling, and using text to highlight benefits. That combination can sell the product by taking your target audience to the next sales funnel step. Show and mention your brand when appropriate to reinforce brand recognition.

One More Thought

One critical TikTok advertising key is to ensure your target audience remembers your brand and product as a solution to their perceived need. All of these top ads achieve that result. 

You want your TikTok ads to cause watchers to move another step down the sales funnel. They will take action when they see the brand the next time or the time after that. It’s a stairstep process. Some may buy immediately or almost immediately, while others will buy later. The goal is for them to move closer to a buying decision each time they see your ads.

Based on what you’ve learned from the above top-rated TikTok ads, what would you include if you were creating a stand-alone TikTok ad? 

How would you handle ads for a multi-ad TikTok campaign?

A Few Insider Tips for Creating TikTok Ads

TikTok’s Business Help Center provides detailed information on how to create both image and video ads. The directions are user-friendly, transparent, and designed to help you succeed.

Insider Tip: When TikTok’s Business Help Center suggests or recommends a best practice, they may not call it that. What they advise doing, however, is based on what performs best for the TikTok platform. TikTok wants your ads to succeed.

Insider Tip: TikTok ads can run up to 60 seconds, but the best practice for optimal ad length is 9-16 seconds. That makes sense, given our increasingly shortened attention spans. If you exceed that ad length, you may or may not get the results you desire. It depends on factors discussed in the above ad examples.

Insider Tip: Any time TikTok shows a red Note in the Business Help Center, they’re saying you can’t cross that line without consequences. These notes tell you which policies are not negotiable.

Insider Tip: Stay on top of new tools available for your TikTok ads. In its September 14, 2022 newsletter, Social Media Examiner included a TikTok ad update (in the quote below) that should provide even better ads data analysis: 

“More User Behavior and Trends Stats for Marketers From TikTok

TikTok recently added more audience data to its Insights research dashboard under the following segments.

• Insights
• Countries
• Industries
• Holidays

Marketers can use the data to understand audience behaviors across industries, geographic locations, seasonal timeframes, and more. To learn how you can plan and refine your campaigns with this data, visit the dashboard.”

For more information about creating TikTok ads, and working successfully with TikTok’s Business Ads Center, read these adQuadrant articles.

Want To Ensure Your TikTok Ad Campaign Is Successful?

You’re not alone if you think digital marketing gets more complicated every year. As the internet grows and matures at a rapid pace, it gets more complex. 

Many moving pieces are necessary to create successful ad campaigns for each social media platform, including TikTok. Ad campaigns work differently enough on each social media platform that creating and juggling them can be confusing. That’s why it pays to work with an agency that’s successfully created top TikTok ad campaigns.

adQuadrant specializes in social media ad campaigns for every platform, including TikTok. We collaborate and plan TikTok ad strategy goals with you to ensure your ads showcase your brand and its benefits. Our top-rated ads are designed to show that your brand meets your target audience’s perceived needs. Let’s talk about how we can partner with your unique e-commerce brand to create the type of TikTok ad campaign that will lift your brand to the next level and beyond.

About the author: Merikay Noah has over 20 years’ experience in digital marketing. She worked with e-commerce B2C and B2B websites of all kinds, from Fortune 100s to small start-ups, at two of the top three search engines and at a Los Angeles ad agency. Her successful e-commerce book publishing website, PopcornReads.com, attracted an international audience of bookaholics for over eight years. She now lives in the Blue Ridge Mountains, where she works as a copywriter and loves to hike with her small but fierce doggy protector – Miss Lucy.