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Bidding Strategy

The Bid Strategy you select tells our system how to bid for you in the ad auction—by managing parameters like cost per result and budget utilization.

TikTok offers two bidding strategies aimed at helping you achieve the business outcome you're aiming for — whether it's driving brand awareness, generating leads, or maximizing conversions. We recommend selecting a bid strategy that is best aligned with your primary KPI to maximize campaign efficiency.

TikTok ads manager currently supports 2 bidding strategies.

  • Cost Cap (goal-based): Control the average cost per result from auction
  • Maxium deliver (spend-based): Maximize the number of results for your budget

To see how to select a Bid Strategy for your ad group, watch the video below.

Bidding Strategies Overview​

Cost Cap​

Using Cost Cap will give the system an average cost per result that it tries to achieve. This means that the cost per result sometimes will fluctuate higher or lower than the bid amount.

  • Supported Advertising Objectives: App Installs, Conversions, and Lead Generation

    • Cost Cap is the default bidding strategy for the reach and video view objectives— and is supported by a suggested bid and reach estimator to help advertisers understand the impact of the bid to be used (for details— see Simplified Bidding UI for Brand Auction ).
    • Cost Cap is only available for Conversions campaigns when the Optimization Goal is set to Conversion.

  • Supported Billing Event: Optimized Cost per Mille (oCPM), Cost per Click (CPC), Cost per Mille (CPM), and Cost per View (CPV).

Maximum Delivery​

The Maximum Delivery bidding strategy is a spend-based approach. Advertisers using this strategy do not need to enter a bid amount; instead, the system will use the available ad group budget to generate as many results as possible at the Maximum Delivery per result.

Note: The Maximum Delivery bidding strategy is only available on Daily Budget campaigns and not Lifetime Budget campaigns.

  • Supported Advertising Objectives: Traffic, Reach, Video Views, App Installs, Conversions, Lead Generation, and Catalog Sales.

    • Advertisers who want to use the lowest-cost bidding strategy for the Reach and Video View objectives should simply delete the suggested bid. (for details— see Simplified Bidding UI for Brand Auction).

  • Supported Billing Event: CPC, CPM, CPV, oCPM

Note: When using Maximum Delivery, you will not need to enter a bid as Maximum Delivery seeks to generate as many results as possible against the ad group's budget.

Comparison of Bidding Strategies​

Bidding StrategyHow it worksSupported Advertising ObjectiveSupported Bidding MethodThings to remember
Cost CapKeeping your average cost around or lower than your bid, regardless of your budget.Traffic, Reach, Video Views, Conversions (Clicks), App Installs, Conversions (Conversion), Lead GenerationoCPM, CPC, CPV, CPMCosts per Results may fluctuate day to day, but the average will be around or lower than the bid amount.
Maximum DeliveryMaximizes budget usage— drives the most results possible given a specified budget in a given period of time.Traffic, Reach, Video Views, App Installs, Conversions, Lead Generation, Catalog SalesCPC, CPM, CPV, oCPMCost per Results may fluctuate day to day based on the changes in the auction environment - but you will always obtain the most results at the Maximum Delivery for that time period.

Best Practices for Bidding Strategies​

Bidding StrategyUse CasesThings to RememberBest Practice
Cost Cap- Advertisers looking for goal-based bidding - advertisers looking to keep costs around a specified goal regardless of market conditions.- Recommended strategy for Branding objectives (Reach and Video Views). Requires pixel/good tracking in place to calculate Cost per result accurately.- For advertisers using Reach and Video View: Use the suggested bid and reach estimator to guide your bid cap. - Campaign and Ad Group Setup: At the Campaign level, set the Budget to No Limit. Set the ad group budget to at least 50 times the bid amount.
Maximum Delivery- Advertisers looking for spend-based bidding. i.e. instead of setting a specified bid, the advertiser wants to ensure that they drive the most results for a given budget over a specific time period.- You will see more volatility in your cost per results during periods of high competition. Cost per Results may fluctuate day to day based on the changes in the auction environment, but you will always obtain the most results at the Maximum Delivery for that time period.- Campaign and Ad Group Setup: At the Campaign level, set the Budget to No Limit. At the Ad Group, set a daily budget that can cover at least 50 conversions (based on your account's historical cost per result). Post-Learning Phase (for conversion events only): Only increase the ad group budget by a maximum of 50% at a time, as increasing the budget will often result in a higher cost per results. The system will find the Maximum Delivery per results first and then increase the bid amount to achieve the most results that the budget can support. Wait for another 50 conversions and one day before adjusting the budget again.