Support

How Lift works on TikTok Ads

Lift checks every TikTok ad account connected to your workspace once a day and lists what it finds as cards on the Lift tab, where TikTok above the list shows only those. Lift reads the account and never changes anything in it: every change is yours to make in TikTok Ads Manager. For what each check looks for, see The checks Lift runs on TikTok Ads.

Which accounts Lift checks

Lift checks TikTok accounts on Lift only and Block + Lift workspaces alike, once Tapper has set your workspace up. There is nothing to switch on: Lift's Setup has no TikTok section.

  • A new account gets no early check: Lift reads it at the next daily read (30 days of history the first time), and the daily check after that can write its first cards.
  • An account that needs reconnecting is neither read nor checked until you reconnect it, and its open cards stay as they were: see Reconnect an ad account that stopped working.

What Lift reads, and when

Once a day, after 12:00 UTC, when TikTok has settled the previous day's figures, Lift reads the account's campaigns, ad groups, ads and custom audiences, and each ad group's and ad's daily figures, from spend (in the account's own currency) and results to clicks, video views, reach and frequency.

TikTok restates conversions after the fact, so Lift reads the last 28 complete days again every day and judges the account up to the day three days back, in the account's own time zone: the two most recent days never enter a cost comparison. From that day, the checks look back 28 days, judge most problems on the last 7 and price money over the 28. TopView and Promote campaigns are left out.

The data check before any card

Before any check runs, Lift holds the day back when the day's figures from TikTok are incomplete, when the read of campaigns, ad groups and ads has not finished, when the account is not active in TikTok, or when Tapper's spend for the last 7 days is more than 5% away from TikTok's own report, or that report cannot be read.

On a held day, Lift adds and closes no card, and the account's open TikTok cards leave the list and every total until a later daily check passes, then come back with their first Detected date, or close.

Money cards are also recounted from TikTok before they show (every one worth more than $50 a day, and all of them on an account not in US dollars). A card whose figures disagree waits for a later day.

How Lift judges an ad group

What counts as a result

A result is TikTok's own result for the ad group's optimization goal, counted on the ad group's own attribution windows; results of different goals are never added up or compared. A card names the result in the goal's terms, and the goal sets the starting funnel stage:

  • Top of the funnel: 1,000 people reached (for reach), an impression, a 6-second view, a 6-second or 15-second focused view, a follow or a profile visit.
  • Middle: a click, a landing page view, an engaged session or a lead.
  • Bottom: a conversion or a purchase, an install or an in-app event.

Leads and bottom-of-funnel results count as conversions. Reach cannot be added up across days, so a reach ad group is costed per 1,000 people reached over 28 days and left out of the cost and budget-move checks. An ad group whose goal Lift does not recognize gets no card, nor do its ads.

Learning, estimated

TikTok does not tell Tapper whether an ad group is learning, so Lift estimates it, and every TikTok card says so (Learning estimated in its Evidence). An ad group leaves learning 7 days or 25 results after it is created or materially changed, whichever comes first; with value bidding it needs both 7 days and 50 results, and under campaign budget optimization 3 days or 50 results. A material change is a budget change of more than 30%, or any change to the budget mode, bidding, goal or optimization event, audiences, locations, languages, ages, gender, placements or schedule. When Lift's daily reads show no change, the last edit TikTok reports counts, even a rename: that means fewer cards, never more.

Funnel stages

In the middle and bottom of the funnel, an ad group's included audiences refine its stage, and the first rule that applies decides: an audience Lift cannot place leaves it without a stage; website, shop activity or app activity audiences keep the stage; engagement, lead generation or business account audiences move it to the middle; and customer file or offline event audiences alone make it an ad group for existing customers. Anything else, lookalikes included, keeps the stage. Excluded audiences never count.

The stage decides which checks look at an ad group; only Move budget to the cheaper ad group, Creative wearing out and Results stopped look at an ad group with no stage. You cannot see or change a TikTok ad group's stage: cards do not show it, and Setup's stage settings are for Meta accounts.

Similar ad groups and targets

Similar ad groups share the account, goal, objective, stage and attribution windows, and exactly the same locations and languages: an all-languages ad group is not compared with a one-language one, and an ad group with no location targeting has none. Lift needs at least 3 with 5 or more results each; without them, the checks that compare costs, Spend with no results included, stay quiet.

A TikTok account has no target of its own, as Setup's targets are for Meta accounts. So costs are always compared with similar ad groups, ad groups for existing customers get no money card, and Frequency above the brief uses Tapper's default of 1 to 2 times a week.

How cards open, close and come back

  • Quiet ad groups. Lift gives no advice on an ad group it estimates is learning, with fewer than 7 days of spend in the last 28, or in a campaign that has not spent in the last 3 days. Only Results stopped still looks at those. An ad group's cards close under Resolved when it goes quiet, and come back once it is not, if the check still finds the problem.
  • Only what TikTok delivers. Cards are raised only on what TikTok is delivering (switched on and Active, or out of budget for the day), and an open card closes under Resolved when TikTok stops delivering what it is about.
  • No longer found. A card also closes under Resolved when Lift no longer finds the problem on a day the data check passed, or when Tapper revises the check. Cards closed under Resolved never count as money saved.
  • Results stopped. While Results stopped finds results missing on the account, and for 7 days after its card goes, only it, Buying clicks instead of page views and Frequency above the brief run there. The other open cards leave the list meanwhile, then return or close.
  • Your actions. Cards you mark as done or dismiss stay there while the check keeps finding the same thing. On TikTok, Not for this account closes the check's open cards on that account, but the check keeps running and can raise new ones.

What works only on Google Ads or Meta Ads

None of these apply to TikTok accounts:

  • Google Ads only: the Why tab's reasons and fix plan, the Settings tab and its alerts, the Products tab, and Setup's Google Ads settings such as the Detection window.
  • Meta Ads only: the funnel stage on cards, and Setup's Meta section, where you set stages and targets.

Still need help?

Chat with our team and mention this article.