TikTok catalog ads and shopping ads
TikTok Catalog Ads turn your product catalog into ads that show each person the products they are most likely to want. This guide explains how they differ from TikTok's shopping ads for TikTok Shop, and how to set up the catalog, product sets, pixel events and formats, using what TikTok states in its Business Help Center.
This guide is built from TikTok's Business Help Center, starting with its page About Catalog Ads in TikTok Ads Manager and the pages linked in each section below. It covers what TikTok's catalog and shopping ads are, which one fits a website shop and which one fits TikTok Shop, how to build the catalog and product sets, which pixel events the ads need, and the ad formats you can choose. Selling inside TikTok itself is covered in our TikTok Shop guide, pixel setup in our TikTok pixel guide, and the same kind of ads on Facebook and Instagram in our Meta catalog guide.
Catalog ads and video shopping ads: what the names mean
TikTok describes Catalog Ads as an ad solution that uses images, videos, and product information from your Catalog to create personalized ads
. You upload your products once, and TikTok picks which products to show each person based on their interests and behaviour. When someone taps the ad, they go to your website, your app or an Instant Page to buy. TikTok lists Catalog Ads as available with the Sales objective (website and app destinations), with the Traffic objective in the upgraded Smart+ experience, and in Smart+ campaigns.
The naming is confusing because TikTok has renamed these products. Older TikTok pages call the catalog version "Video Shopping Ads (Catalog)", and some of them still do: the page on creating a catalog says it is only available in markets with Video Shopping Ads (Catalog) capabilities
. Several old "video shopping ads for catalog" help addresses now redirect to TikTok's page on Smart+ Catalog Ads. So when you see "video shopping ads" next to a catalog, read it as Catalog Ads.
"Video Shopping Ads" for TikTok Shop is a different product: in-feed videos with product links that send people to buy inside TikTok. TikTok's page on the GMV Max migration says that starting July 2025, GMV Max will be the default and only supported campaign type for TikTok Shop Ads
. You can no longer create new Video Shopping Ads, Product Shopping Ads or LIVE Shopping Ads with your TikTok Shop as the sales destination, though existing campaigns stay active. Video Shopping Ads are still available with Showcase as the sales destination (see below).
Website shop, TikTok Shop or Showcase
Which product you use depends on where the sale happens. TikTok's catalog ad pages say you don't need to set up a TikTok Shop when you choose a Catalog as your product source
.
| Where people buy | Product source | What to run |
|---|---|---|
| Your own website or app | A TikTok catalog | Catalog Ads, manual or Smart+, with the Sales objective (website or app destination) |
| Your TikTok Shop | TikTok Shop products | Product GMV Max or LIVE GMV Max (since July 2025) |
| A TikTok profile's Showcase | Products shown in the Showcase | Video Shopping Ads with Showcase as the product source |
Showcase is a shopping bag on a TikTok profile. TikTok's page About TikTok Shop and Showcase says You can have a Showcase without a TikTok Shop
: a marketing or affiliate account can show some or all of a brand's products, and those products may belong to one or many TikTok Shops. Ads with TikTok Shop as the source need access to the shop and a TikTok account; ads with Showcase as the source need only the TikTok account. TikTok's page on Video Shopping Ads with Showcase lists it for ad accounts registered in the United States, the United Kingdom, China, Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand.
If you sell on TikTok Shop, the shop setup, fees and GMV Max are covered in our TikTok Shop guide. Shop Ads can also appear in the Shop tab: TikTok's page on Shop Tab placements lists Recommendations and Search Results there, alongside the For You and Following feeds. The rest of this guide is about Catalog Ads for a website or app shop.
Creating a catalog
A catalog is an asset in TikTok Ads Manager that stores your product names, descriptions, prices, images and videos. To create one, go to Assets, select Catalog and click Create. You give it a name, a default currency (it must match your products' currency) and a targeting location. TikTok says the targeting location will be the only location you can target with ads featuring the products in your catalog
, so a shop that sells in several countries needs to plan this before uploading.
TikTok's help pages describe these ways to add products:
- Manually Add: a form per product, for small catalogs.
- Data Feed Schedule: TikTok fetches a file from a URL on a schedule. Supported formats are CSV, XML (RSS), XML (Atom), ZIP and GZ; the file must be under 50 GB and hold fewer than 20 million products.
- Upload File: a one-off upload of TikTok's template.
- Google Merchant Center import: binds your existing Merchant Center feed and keeps it in sync. It only supports Merchant Center feeds that use the Scheduled Fetch method.
- Pixel Upload: updates products from pixel events on your trusted websites (up to 20 domains). The pixel must be active and have sent an event within 7 days, and each update can take up to 15 minutes to show.
- Auto-generated catalog: TikTok builds the catalog from your website and pixel. It needs a pixel that passes content_id, at least 2 products on the site, and a site that is not on Shopify.
Shopify stores can connect their catalog and pixel through TikTok's Shopify integration, which TikTok says matches the two automatically. Once products are in, you can add rules to a product source (value replacement, default values, mapping, capitalisation, regex replace) to clean up the feed without editing the file. If you work with an agency or several ad accounts, TikTok's page on managing catalogs in Business Center covers sharing a catalog with members and partners and using it across ad accounts; Business Center itself is explained in our TikTok ads basics guide.
Required product fields
TikTok's Catalog Product Parameters page lists 9 required fields and 27 optional ones. A product with a required field missing produces an error. The required fields are:
| Field | What TikTok asks for |
|---|---|
| sku_id | A unique ID for the item, such as a SKU. Reuse the same ID to update a product. |
| title | The item's name, without promotional text like "free shipping" and without emoji. |
| description | A short description of the item. |
| availability | in stock, available for order, preorder, out of stock or discontinued. |
| condition | new, refurbished or used. |
| price | Must match the price on your landing page. |
| link | The product page URL. TikTok warns that 404s or empty pages hurt performance. |
| image_link | JPG or PNG; at least 500x500 for square carousel images. Google Drive, Dropbox and Flickr links are listed as not supported. |
| brand | The product's brand name. |
Among the optional fields, TikTok notes that some, such as ios_url and android_url, are mandatory for retargeting delivery and Deeplinks
, so add them if you will send people to an app. Its product set best practices also say to refresh the catalog daily so prices and stock match your site. Products marked out of stock can't be advertised.
Product sets
A product set is a group of products inside one catalog, so an ad group can promote, say, one category instead of everything. TikTok's page on creating product sets says you need Catalog Management permission for the catalog. In Catalog Manager, open the catalog's Product Sets tab, click Create Product Set and choose one of three methods:
- Use Filters: rules on product attributes. TikTok's filter list includes is, is not, contains, does not contain, starts with, is any of the following, and greater than / less than / equal to for numbers such as price.
- Upload SKU list: a CSV of SKU IDs, up to 5,000 per file.
- Manually Select Products: tick products one by one, for small sets.
TikTok's best practices recommend putting all products into a single catalog rather than several, and using the full catalog for retargeting so the system can choose the most relevant products. Use product sets for prospecting campaigns or for categories you want to push.
Pixel events and match rate
Catalog Ads pick products for each person from what they did on your site or app, so your pixel or app events must name the products. TikTok's page on setting up catalog match rate says Catalog Manager supports three event types: ViewContent, AddtoCart and CompletePayment, and that the content_ID of your events
must follow the same format as the SKU ID in your catalog
. You then connect the pixel or app under Event Sources in Catalog Manager. Setting up those events is covered in our TikTok pixel guide.
The match rate is the share of events with content IDs that match a product in your catalog. TikTok's example: 600 matched Add to Cart events out of 1,000 sent is a 60% match rate. Its advice:
- Keep the match rate above 90%; a low rate limits which products the system can show.
- Connecting several catalogs to the same pixel or app splits the match rate between them, which is another reason to use one catalog.
- Since May 31, 2024, the match rate is tailored to the catalog's origin country: a US catalog shows US events matched to it.
- After you first connect a catalog and event source, the rate can take several days to settle. After that, a swing of +/-20%
can indicate a misconfiguration
.
Creating a catalog ad campaign
TikTok's pages for manual Catalog Ads for a website and Smart+ Catalog Ads both start with the same requirement: You will need at least 4 products in your catalog that are in stock, approved and activated.
The manual steps, in short:
- In Ads Manager, create a campaign with the Sales objective and Website as the sales destination, then choose Manual campaign.
- Turn on Use catalog and pick the catalog.
- At ad level, choose the products: All products, a Product set, or Specific products (up to 20).
- Choose the ad format and creative (see the next section), add interactive add-ons and the website URL, with URL parameters if you track campaigns that way.
- Publish. The ads and the catalog's products go to review.
In a Smart+ Catalog Ads campaign, TikTok automates the creative, the add-ons and the budget; TikTok recommends adding at least 6 videos. The rest of Smart+ is explained in our Smart+ guide. For apps, TikTok has a separate App sales flow with a deferred deeplink option, and Smart+ Catalog Ads for Website and app can send people to the app or the website in one campaign. For bid strategies and budgets, see our TikTok bidding guide.
Ad formats and add-ons
TikTok lists these formats for Catalog Ads:
- Dynamic format: you supply the videos, add-ons and destinations, and TikTok assembles Catalog Video, Single Video and Carousel ads for each person. It is included automatically in Smart+ Catalog Ads.
- Single video or image: each creative is treated as a standalone ad and delivered on its own.
- Carousel: swipeable product images from the catalog.
- Catalog video: your videos linked to products in the catalog. You link them once and they stay available for future Catalog Ad campaigns.
- Image Catalog Carousel: 2 to 10 cards pulled from the catalog, for the Traffic objective in the upgraded Smart+ experience.
A catalog carousel is not the same as an ordinary carousel ad. TikTok's comparison page shows the differences:
| Catalog (VSA) carousel | Standard carousel | |
|---|---|---|
| Images | 2-20 catalog product images | 2-35 uploaded images |
| Spark Ads | Non-Spark only | Spark and non-Spark |
| Product picked per person | Yes | No |
| Clicks | Each image links to its own product page | Only the CTA and the last image lead to one landing page |
Single video and Catalog video ads can carry interactive add-ons that show up to 20 products along the bottom of the video: info cards, product cards, product tiles, showcase tiles and interactive elements such as a gift box. TikTok gives their space as 130 px for product cards, 546 px for product tiles and 750x421 px for display cards, so keep text and faces out of the bottom of your videos. You can pick one add-on yourself or let a dynamic add-on choose. For the creative side, see our guides to Spark Ads and TikTok ad review.
How we run catalog ads
This part is our own practice, not TikTok's guidance:
- Before any campaign, we check that the pixel sends ViewContent, AddtoCart and CompletePayment with content IDs in exactly the catalog's SKU format, and look at the match rate in Catalog Manager.
- We feed TikTok from the same scheduled feed the shop already uses for Google or Meta, so prices and stock stay in step, and fix rejected products before launch.
- We keep one catalog per selling country (a catalog has one targeting location), and use product sets for categories, bestsellers or margin groups.
- We run retargeting on the full catalog and prospecting on a product set we can stand behind.
- We add real product videos and link them as catalog videos rather than relying only on generated slideshows.
If you want help setting up catalog ads for your shop, see our services.
Frequently asked questions
What are TikTok catalog ads?
Ads that TikTok builds from a product catalog you upload, using your product images, videos, prices and names. The system chooses which products to show each person based on their interests and behaviour, and the ad leads to your website, app or an Instant Page.
Are video shopping ads the same as catalog ads?
Partly. TikTok used to call catalog-based ads "Video Shopping Ads (Catalog)" and now calls them Catalog Ads. Video Shopping Ads for TikTok Shop are a separate product that sends people to buy inside TikTok; since July 2025 new TikTok Shop ads run as GMV Max, and Video Shopping Ads remain available with Showcase as the sales destination.
Do I need TikTok Shop to run catalog ads?
No. TikTok says you don't need to set up a TikTok Shop when a catalog is your product source. You need a catalog with at least 4 products that are in stock, approved and activated.
Which pixel events do TikTok catalog ads need?
Catalog Manager supports ViewContent, AddtoCart and CompletePayment from your pixel or app. The content ID in each event must use the same format as the SKU ID in your catalog, and TikTok recommends a match rate above 90%.
Can I import my Google Merchant Center feed into TikTok?
Yes, if the Merchant Center feed uses the Scheduled Fetch method. TikTok's Google import binds that feed and syncs your products; feeds created manually, by file or through the API are not supported, so use a TikTok data feed schedule for those.
For the same ads on Facebook and Instagram, see our Meta catalog guide. For more on TikTok, see TikTok ads basics, the TikTok pixel and TikTok ads reporting.