What TikTok ads cost a Perth business, which ad formats are worth running, and when we would tell you to spend the money on another channel.
TikTok is a good place to put an offer in front of people who did not know they wanted it. It is also a good place to waste money, because a TikTok ad competes with the funniest thing someone's friend posted that day, and most people did not open the app looking for a business. This is how we think about TikTok ads for Perth businesses: what they cost, which formats are worth using, and when we would point you somewhere else.
If you would rather have it run for you, this is how we work as a TikTok ads agency in Perth.
Facebook and Instagram share one ads account. TikTok does not. TikTok ads are built in TikTok Ads Manager, measured with the TikTok Pixel, and they need creative made for TikTok. So if Meta ads are already running, adding TikTok means a second account, a second set of tracking and a second stream of video, not an extra box ticked in the account you already have.
So the question to answer before any budget is whether you can keep making short vertical video that looks like it belongs there. A business that can film something worth watching every couple of weeks has room on TikTok. A business with a folder of product photos has less, although not none (see Carousel ads below).
We run all of them. These are the ones a Perth business is most likely to use, and what each is for.
The standard ad. It plays in the For You feed between organic videos and is usually bought at auction. Vertical 9:16 video is recommended, at a minimum of 540 x 960 pixels, and a video can run up to 10 minutes. Fifteen to thirty seconds is usually plenty.
A Spark Ad puts paid budget behind an organic TikTok post, either one from your own account or one from a creator who has authorised you to use it. The likes, comments, shares and follows the ad earns stay on the original post, so the work keeps paying off after the campaign ends. For most businesses this is where TikTok starts: post something, see what lands, then put money behind the posts people actually watched.
Images instead of video. Between 2 and 35 images play in order with music, people swipe through them, and the ad carries one caption, one call to action and one landing page. Useful when you have no video yet, or when you want to show a range, a menu or the steps of a service in one ad. (Online stores can also run a catalogue version where each product links to its own page.)
The person taps your ad and a form opens inside TikTok. TikTok says it loads faster than a typical landing page, and it can pre-fill some fields. Leads can sync to your CRM through Zapier, LeadsBridge or a custom API. If you need to ask detailed qualifying questions, a lead generation campaign can send people to a form on your own website instead.
TikTok also sells ads on its search results. Search Ads Campaigns let you bid on keywords and appear on the search results page. Australia is one of the markets where these are live for website conversion campaigns. Search lead generation campaigns are US only for now.
The first video someone sees when they open TikTok, full screen and sound on. It is bought ahead on guaranteed impressions rather than on the open auction, usually through a TikTok sales representative (some approved advertisers can now book it in Ads Manager), and TikTok says it is only available to qualified advertisers. The minimum spend varies by market. It suits a national launch more than a local service business.
TikTok does not publish a price list. Most ads are sold at auction: you set a budget and a bid strategy, and what you pay for each thousand impressions, click or lead moves with how many other advertisers want the same people and how well your ad holds attention. Depending on the objective you are charged per thousand impressions, per click or per six-second view.
There are minimums. If you set a campaign budget it must be more than US$50, and each ad group's daily budget must be more than US$20. TikTok states those figures in US dollars.
You will see TikTok cost-per-thousand figures quoted all over the internet. Most come from agency blogs with no stated method, so we do not repeat them here. The useful way to think about cost is in three parts.
Most TikTok campaigns that fail do not fail on targeting. They fail on one of four things.
A polished brand video cut down from a TV spot or resized from YouTube tends to look out of place in the feed. What works looks like a TikTok: a person talking to camera, a quick before and after, the product being used, with the point made in the first three seconds. Keep text and logos clear of the caption and buttons at the bottom of the screen; TikTok publishes safe zone templates for exactly this.
Five edits of the same video are one idea. We want a few genuinely different concepts live so the system can find the one that carries the account, and so we can see why. Have the next idea ready before the current one runs out, not after.
TikTok traffic is interruption, not intent. Someone who tapped your ad was watching something else a moment ago, so the landing page has to match the ad exactly: same offer, same image, same promise, and a form short enough to finish with one thumb. If your site is slow or generic, an Instant Form is often the better destination.
TikTok optimises towards the results it can see. The TikTok Pixel reports actions on your website, and the Events API sends the same events from your server, which recovers conversions the browser misses. TikTok recommends running both together, with deduplication so nothing is counted twice, and you need one or the other set up before you can run a website conversions campaign. We check tracking before a campaign launches, not after the budget is spent.
If lead follow-up is the weak point, the fix is usually email automation that replies within minutes.
We would rather tell you this before you spend on it.
Where TikTok does suit is something people did not know they wanted until they saw it: food and hospitality, events, fitness, beauty, retail and ecommerce, and services with a visible result. If a 20 second video of what you do would make someone stop scrolling, it is worth a test.
If you are comparing agencies, four questions sort most of them out. Who actually does the work? Whose name is the ad account in? Is there a lock-in contract? And will they tell you if TikTok is the wrong channel?
Our answers: the founders, Kobi and Harvie, run the strategy and the work, with no account managers in between. We do not film, but we can edit the footage you have and brief you on exactly what to shoot. The ad account stays in your name. Retainers roll on with no lock-in. And every engagement starts with a fit check on audience and market before any budget goes in, because sometimes the honest answer is that the money is better spent elsewhere. More detail on our TikTok advertising in Perth page.
Enough for TikTok to learn which ads and audiences produce results, which depends on what a lead or sale is worth to you. The platform minimum is US$20 a day per ad group, but the minimum is not a plan. TikTok's own advice for lead campaigns is three to five ad groups, each with a daily budget of at least ten times the cost per lead you expect, so work the budget back from that rather than spreading a small amount across many.
Both appear in the For You feed. A standard In-Feed ad is built in Ads Manager and lives only as an ad. A Spark Ad runs an existing organic post, yours or a creator's, so the engagement it earns stays on that post and your profile. For most businesses Spark Ads are the better starting point, because they look like the rest of the feed.
Promote is TikTok's in-app boost: a few taps to push a video or LIVE, with ready-made packs for budget, duration and audience. It is fine for a quick test. For anything where leads or sales matter, Ads Manager gives you far more control over objectives, testing, tracking and reporting.
They can, when the work is worth watching and the targeting stays on the area you actually serve. A tradie finishing a job, a clinic explaining a treatment, a team people can put a face to: that kind of video earns a second look. If your customers only think about you when something breaks, search will usually do more for the same budget.
