Arthur Mooso’s agency has been one of the world’s first to access TikTok’s Beta Advertising platform. He shares his experiences on scaling e-commerce brands on the growing social giant.

Q) Arthur, thanks for joining us. Your agency was one of the first to be whitelisted to access TikTok’s Beta Advertising Platform. How did that opportunity come about?

A) It was a really unique opportunity that came about because of our solid work on other social channels and a friendship with one of the leaders on TikTok’s advertising team. Before I started my agency I had worked at Facebook working with ecommerce clients in the US. One of my teammates and I left around the same time to pursue different opportunities. He left to join an agency and I left to join a startup and eventually begin my own agency. We remained good friends and eventually I found out he had left the agency and had taken a leadership position at TikTok. I congratulated him and told him the story about one of the brands we manage was seeing their sales 10x overnight because of an organic viral video they did on TikTok. I was blown away by the power of the platform and its impact it could have. My friend was able to help get my agency whitelisted knowing that we manage a lot of other brands on Facebook and are excellent social content creators. It was a good fit.

Q) What sort of results have you been seeing for the brands you’ve been working with so far on TikTok?

A) TikTok is an amazing top of funnel channel. So far in comparison to Facebook we’ve seen we can get way more efficient outcomes as the CPMs are much lower than other advertising platforms. One of the brands we work with we’re seeing $2.00 add to carts costs based off of the ultra strict single session no view through conversion attribution TikTok has. All that incremental revenue and channel diversity has brought a lot of brands peace of mind as we all know TikTok is still in it’s very early stages.

Q) How does its ads platform differ from Facebook and what are the pros and cons to each in your opinion?

A) The platform has a lot of similarities and differences. The main difference we are seeing isn’t really in the ad platform but rather the consumer base and the type of ads that work. We haven’t had much luck repurposing old Facebook ads on TikTok. Instead we’ve found the ads need to be specific to TikTok. When we create ads we can’t think like a Facebook marketer anymore but rather we analyze trendy dances, songs and themes happening on TikTok and make our ads look as native as we can to the platform. The pros to TikTok is the efficiency and diversifying your revenue channels. The cons have been in the ability to scale. We experience under delivery at times but we’re quickly learning ways of overcoming that and being that the platform is still beta I’m sure as time progresses TikTok will also do their part to overcome this as well.

Q) There is a perception that TikTok mainly appeals to a young demographic, similar to Snapchat and therefore maybe not suitable for brands targeting older age groups. Would you say this is a misconception or true?

A) I would say it is a major misconception. As with most social media the young demographic are the first to adopt it as we saw with Facebook and Instagram however the fastest growing demo for TikTok isn’t teens anymore but millennials. Where TikTok is different from Snapchat is the fact that older demos are quickly adopting and using the platform. Some of the brands we work with are seeing great results reaching younger audiences they couldn’t normally reach and some of the brands who have an older customer base are seeing great results as well. The brands who were early movers on Facebook saw some huge dividends and got to enjoy CPM’s and sales that are no longer possible and I believe the same is true to early adopters of TikTok.

Q) Following on from the above, what brands & industries do you think stand to gain most from leveraging TikTok Ads at this early stage?

A) I would say mobile app install brands, gaming, and ecomm are the ones I can think of who are seeing great results early on. However I’m starting to see all different types of verticals and industries begin using the platform. There are different types of placement media buying for larger brands and auction buying that is very similar to how Facebook works. So I think at this point any brand who thinks they have a compelling enough product or service should be on TikTok.

Q) Lastly, how can somebody contact you to learn more about your services?

A) Have them reach out to me personally at arthur@optimalagency.io.

OptimalAgency