• by Colin Kirkland , May 12, 2023

TikTok has introduced a new video shopping ads feature to its Marketing Partners Program, naming AI-powered automation platform Smartly.io as its inaugural creative and campaign management partner.

Video Shopping Ads, explained by TikTok, are shoppable videos that bring users from the For You page to checkout, aiming to “supercharge” sales by updating the more successful features from the company’s past e-commerce products with new automation and smart functionalities “to maximize performance.”

The video-sharing platform, owned by ByteDance, says there is much opportunity for brands to leverage Video Shopping Ads, citing internal research that shows 56% of TikTok users reporting that ads on the platform have led them to discover new products and brands, with 48% interested in making an in-app purchase.

Through its partnership with Smartly.io, TikTok's new ad product aims to simplify advertisers' workflows through automated building, duplicating, and launching multiple campaigns, ad groups and ads simultaneously while automatically allocating budgets across ad groups and campaigns.

Advertisers are also invited to make automated updates to product catalogs, enhance creative assets and on-brand video templates, and leverage data from third-party data integration and KPIs for shopper engagement, according to the company.

Smartly.io’s Video Shopping Ads offering is now available for all commerce and retail advertisers to use in their TikTok campaigns.