Are TikTok ads better than Facebook ads?

How they compare

• App objectives: TikTok’s App Promotion objective covers installs and retargeting, optimising for clicks, installs, in-app events or value. Meta’s App Promotion objective optimises for installs, app events or value.
• Placements: TikTok ads run as native vertical video in the feed. Meta app ads can run across Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and Meta Audience Network.
• Creative: TikTok’s Spark Ads let you run organic posts from your account or a creator’s as ads. Meta app ads support images, video and playable ads.
• Minimum budgets: TikTok requires a daily campaign budget above $50 and an ad group budget above $20.
• Learning: Meta says ad sets usually leave learning after about 50 results in a week.

In practice

Run a fair test: same app, same countries, same optimisation event and a similar budget, long enough for both to finish learning. Compare cost per retained or paying user and payback, not CPM or cost per install. Results often differ by genre, country and creative style.

See how we run TikTok for apps and games on our TikTok ads agency page.