• by Colin Kirkland , March 26, 2025

As U.S. lawmakers urge the White House to extend TikTok's sell-off deadline, the ByteDance-owned social-media platform is focused on expanding its Smart+ automated ad solution, with a host of new updates for in-app ecommerce providers.

TikTok first announced Smart+ last October in an effort to help advertisers automate the process of campaign creation ahead of the holiday push, ultimately showing a brand's top-performing creative asset to the target audience at the best time.

The Smart+ campaigns have since become available to advertisers in four formats, including Web Campaigns, App Campaigns, Lead Generation Campaigns and Catalog Ads.

The company says its Smart+ campaigns drive stronger incrementality in return on ad spend and purchases compared to other lower-funnel campaigns, with 5.1x higher incremental ROAS and 2.2x higher relative purchase lift.

TikTok is expanding its Smart+ Catalog Ads to website and app promotions within a single campaign to include conversions in both formats, in an effort to help brands drive outcomes across more of their promotions.

“In addition to lower-funnel performance objectives like website sales and app installs, Smart+ is now available for the Traffic objective, allowing brands to power their customer acquisition with AI-powered automation,” TikTok adds.

TikTok is also adding new elements to its GMV Max feature, which automates campaign creation on TikTok Shop, the company's ecommerce live-shopping hub.

According to the company, TikTok Shop has tripled the amount of shoppers every month since its launch.

Now, advertisers will see two new features. Affiliate Creative for Ads invites Shop merchants to automatically use their affiliate content in their GMV Max campaigns, which will now also include Live formats so advertisers can maximize GMV for their livestreams in addition to their Shop products.

When TikTok originally tested GMV Max, the company said merchants saw an average of 30% Gross Merchandise Value uplift.

The company is also extending its Search Ads to the Shop tab in order to place advertisers closer to a consumer's “point of discovery, consideration, and conversion.”

TikTok is also adding more functionality to its Symphony AI-powered ad creation tools, allowing sellers to convert their brand or product details into shoppable content “in minutes” via a new product-to-video tool.

“Input the information and assets for your brand or product or import them directly from a URL,” the company explains.

TikTok's new Symphony tools also include access to AI avatars, video-script generation, automated language translation and more, highlighting the company’s willingness to bring cutting-edge selling tools to brands and in-app sellers regardless of its uncertain future in the U.S.