TikTok Smart+ campaigns: what is automated
Smart+ is TikTok's automated campaign type for sales, app installs, leads and traffic. This guide explains what the system decides for you, which controls you keep, and how creatives, catalogs and budgets work inside it, using what TikTok Business Help states.
This guide is built from TikTok's Business Help Center, mainly About Smart+ Campaigns, Smart+ Upgraded Experience and the setting pages for each objective. It covers which objectives Smart+ supports, what the system decides for you, which controls you keep, how catalogs and creatives work inside it, and what changes when you copy a manual campaign into Smart+. Business Center, objectives, the Pixel and ad review are covered in our TikTok ads basics guide, so they are not repeated here.
What Smart+ is
Smart+ is TikTok's automated campaign type for performance goals. TikTok describes it as a single AI-powered campaign that automates campaign and audience targeting, optimization, and creative
. In its original form you give Smart+ your KPIs, your creative assets, and the target location and language, and the system handles the rest.
The automation TikTok lists falls into three areas:
- Delivery: the system chooses who sees the ad and where, within the limits you set.
- Creative rotation: it combines your videos, texts and calls to action, detects fatigue, and TikTok says Smart+
will also attempt to shift budget towards the highest-performing creative and pause poor performers
. - Generated creative: optional AI features can add or remix music, hooks, formats and scripts to make more variations. TikTok says you can turn off Smart+ generated creatives in Ads Manager at any time.
Some accounts also see paid and organic optimization, which adds an organic anchor link to selected posts and reports paid and organic results together. TikTok says anchor links are only shown to users aged 18 and over, and that if you don't see the feature, it isn't available to you yet.
Objectives and settings by campaign type
Smart+ covers lower-funnel objectives: sales on a website, app promotion, lead generation and traffic. Each one has its own help page with the settings it allows. This table summarises them:
| Smart+ type | Objective | Optimization goals | Bidding |
|---|---|---|---|
| Web | Sales, website destination | Value, Conversion, Landing Page View, Click | All bidding strategies |
| App | App promotion, iOS and Android | Install, in-app event, value (Android only) | iOS: Maximize Results. Android: Target Cost per Result or Maximum Results |
| Lead Generation | Lead generation: website, Instant Form, TikTok direct messages, instant messaging apps | Conversion, form submission, conversations, click (messaging apps) | Maximum results, Target cost per result |
| Traffic | Traffic, website destination | Click, Landing Page View | Maximum Delivery, Cost Cap |
A few details from those pages are worth knowing before you choose:
- Placements: the Web, App and Lead Generation pages say manually selecting placements
is not supported by Smart+ Campaigns at this time
; placement is automatic. To exclude TikTok Pangle, TikTok says you need a non-Smart+ campaign. The upgraded experience below changes this for accounts that have it. - Spark Ads: you can use Spark Ads or non-Spark ads, but TikTok says you can't mix the two in one Smart+ campaign. How Spark Ads work is in our Spark Ads guide.
- Traffic vs Web: TikTok recommends Smart+ Traffic when you optimise for clicks or landing page views, and Smart+ Web when you have a Pixel or Events API set up and want purchases or add-to-cart events.
- Lead Generation: minimum age can be 18 or 25, and dayparting lets you run ads only on chosen days or hours. Forms themselves are covered in our TikTok lead generation guide.
To start one, you pick the objective in TikTok Ads Manager and turn the Smart+ option on. On the Web page TikTok notes the Smart+ toggle may already be on by default, and you can turn it off for a manual campaign.
The upgraded Smart+ experience
TikTok is merging manual and Smart+ campaign creation into one flow. Its upgraded experience page says you can now set a campaign to full automation, partial automation, or fully manual
. It is available for the Traffic, Sales, Lead Generation and App Promotion objectives, but TikTok also notes the feature may not be available to you yet
. If your Ads Manager still shows the older Smart+ flow, the per-objective limits above apply.
What the upgraded flow adds, according to TikTok:
- Several ad groups per campaign, each with its own optimization, budget, schedule, targeting and placements.
- Placement choice: automatic placement stays the default, but you can pick Select placement and set brand safety options.
- Each ad works like an asset group, with its own destination URL, product set and up to 50 creative assets.
- Creative-level reporting by creative material ID (video, image, catalog, text).
- Automated rules, and a bulk import and export tool for Smart+ campaigns.
Some accounts also get a Manual Mode button that switches budget, placement, targeting, catalog and creative to manual settings in one step. TikTok says it is available for Lead Generation, App Promotion and some Sales campaigns.
Targeting: automatic, controls and custom
TikTok's targeting page for upgraded Smart+ describes three levels. By default, automatic targeting finds the audience itself.
| Level | What you can set | Can the system go beyond it? |
|---|---|---|
| Audience controls | Location, minimum age (18 or 25), languages, excluded audiences | No. These are hard limits. |
| Audience suggestions | Age (25 to 55+), gender, included audiences, interests and behaviours | Yes. They guide automatic targeting but don't restrict it. |
| Custom targeting | The full manual set: age from 13, gender, languages, include and exclude audiences, interests and behaviours, spending power, household income, device | You set it by hand with Switch to custom targeting; TikTok notes it still supports Smart audience and Smart Interests & Behaviors |
TikTok warns that switching to custom targeting may limit delivery and impact campaign performance
. Its lead generation best practices also start broad and suggest narrowing only if lead quality drops.
Budget and bidding
In the upgraded flow you choose a budget strategy first:
- Campaign budget (campaign budget optimization): one daily or lifetime budget that TikTok allocates across ad groups. All ad groups must then share the same optimization location, goal and event, and bid adjustments apply to all of them. For fully automated campaigns you can add an optional spend target per ad group, which TikTok says it will aim for but does not guarantee.
- Ad group budget: a separate daily or lifetime budget per ad group, which is the route TikTok gives for a manual campaign with different goals per ad group.
With a daily campaign budget you can also turn on a goal-based budget increase, which raises the budget automatically when the ads hit their target CPA or Day 0 target ROAS. TikTok's duplication page adds that daily budgets support Lowest Cost and Cost Cap bidding, while lifetime budgets support only Lowest Cost.
Creatives, ads and catalogs
You add videos and images from your TikTok posts or creative library, plus ad texts. TikTok says ads will be generated based on combinations of your videos and ad texts, and the high-performing combinations will be automatically delivered
. If you want one fixed video-and-text pair, its instructions are to add only one creative and one text to that ad.
When you include a destination URL, a Recommended tab suggests assets based on your website and past performance. TikTok's Symphony tools add Recommended Creatives, which can generate new assets, and Automatic Enhancements, which can resize, improve quality, translate and dub. For some Web Traffic campaigns you choose whether suggested assets are added upon your approval, added automatically with a notice, or not added. The free creative tools are covered in our TikTok Creative Center guide.
Catalogs work in two ways. In a Smart+ Web campaign, turning on the catalog makes the campaign use catalog creative by default, and TikTok says you can add up to 30 more videos or images. In the upgraded flow, catalog ads are set per ad, so catalog and non-catalog ads can run in the same campaign. If you opt into catalog enhancements, TikTok notes that generated selling points cannot be edited
, so check the product data they come from.
Copying a manual campaign into Smart+
For accounts that have it, the Duplicate feature in the campaign list copies a manual campaign into upgraded Smart+. Most settings carry over, but TikTok lists changes to check before you publish:
- A split test setting is removed.
- Campaign budget optimization settings reset for you to review.
- Minimum age becomes 25+ if the original used 25 or older, otherwise 18+.
- The prospect and retarget targeting structure in Sales catalog and app campaigns is not available unless you switch to manual targeting.
- Bidding that doesn't fit the budget rules, or that differs between ad groups, is left blank.
- Standard calls to action become dynamic ones, and TikTok Instant Page ad groups are not copied.
- If the account isn't on TikTok's allowlist for the placements used, placement becomes TikTok only.
Learning phase and changes
TikTok's best-practice pages for Smart+ Lead Generation and Smart+ App give the same core advice: let a campaign run for 7 days without significant edits to bid, audience or creative, because edits in that period can affect the learning phase. Other points from those pages:
- Lead Generation: a daily budget of at least 10 times the average daily CPA, and budget increases of no more than 50% a day.
- When performance tires, add 2 to 5 new creatives and keep the existing ones, rather than deleting them. The lead generation page says not to add more than 10 at once.
- App: start with 4 to 6 creative assets, and after an edit wait at least 3 days before judging the result.
Our view: when we use it
This part is our own practice, not TikTok's guidance. Smart+ suits a business that has working conversion tracking, enough creative to rotate, and a goal that a single number can measure, such as purchases or form submissions. It suits a campaign less well when you must keep ads to certain placements or audience segments and your account doesn't have the upgraded controls yet. We treat Smart+ the way we treat Google's Performance Max and Meta's Advantage+ campaigns: the system is only as good as the conversion signal and the assets you give it. So we check the tracking first, review generated creative before it runs, and judge results over the learning period, not day by day. If you want help setting up or reviewing a TikTok account, see our services.
Frequently asked questions
What objectives does TikTok Smart+ support?
Smart+ supports Sales (website), App Promotion, Lead Generation and Traffic. The upgraded Smart+ experience is available for the same four objectives, though TikTok says it may not be available to every account yet.
Can I choose placements in a Smart+ campaign?
In the original Smart+ flow, no: placement is automatic and TikTok says to use a non-Smart+ campaign to exclude placements. In the upgraded experience you can use Select placement at ad group level.
Can I turn off AI-generated creatives in Smart+?
Yes. TikTok says the creative AI features are optional and that you can turn off Smart+ generated creatives in TikTok Ads Manager at any time.
Can I use Spark Ads in Smart+?
Yes, but TikTok says you can't use Spark Ads and non-Spark ads together in one Smart+ campaign.
How many creatives can one Smart+ ad hold?
In the upgraded experience each ad works like an asset group with its own destination URL, product set and up to 50 creative assets. In a Smart+ Web catalog campaign you can add up to 30 extra videos or images to the catalog creative.
How long should a Smart+ campaign run before I change it?
TikTok's best practices say to let it run for 7 days without significant edits to the bid, audience or creative, so the learning phase can complete.
For more on TikTok advertising, see our guides to TikTok ads basics, Spark Ads, lead generation ads and TikTok Shop.