• by Colin Kirkland , 3 hours ago

TikTok is using this year’s New York Advertising Week to unveil a number of agentic commerce and advertising solutions, as well as the expansion of its global mobile ad work to advertisers based in the U.S., allowing them to extend their campaigns to hundreds of thousands of third-party apps. 

Originally launched in 2019 as “Pangle,” the TikTok Ad Network (TTAN) connects advertisers with consumers across almost 400,000 third-party publisher apps. 

Located within TikTok Ads Manager, TTAN is designed to help advertisers utilize the social media company’s data as a way to target and discover off-platform consumers, while providing DoubleVerify and IAS brand safety and placement controls for their ads.

Until now, advertisers based in the United States haven’t been able to access TTAN, which includes over 40 gaming and non-gaming app genres, with 300 sub-categories, according to TikTok’s Business Resource Center.

In addition, TikTok is attempting to compete with rival social media giants’ agentic tools, including Meta’s Muse assistant, which has been downloaded over 5 million times. The company describes its new “Shopping Assistant” as a conversational AI agent trained to “guide users through their shopping journey.”

Similar to Muse, “it will understand context, remember user needs,” and select products based on their data, the company says.

TikTok has also debuted an AI agent for lead generation, designed to help businesses attract and convert “high-intent, actionable” consumers through AI-guided conversations within the app.

Aiming to provide a more seamless checkout process for users ahead of the holiday shopping season, TikTok is also launching a way for users to make purchases from brands without leaving the app.