The Short Answer: What TikTok Ads Cost
TikTok ads cost about $4–$5 per 1,000 impressions for e-commerce brands in 2026 benchmarks, and $7–$32 for US campaigns depending on the goal. A sale cost a median $17.07 across Triple Whale's 5,900-brand report. TikTok's own floor is a daily budget above $50 per campaign and $20 per ad group.
Those are other companies' published figures, read November 4, 2026. Mark Studios runs TikTok campaigns on request, makes the ads and quotes each account, so this page has no Mark Studios price.
The floor isn't the budget TikTok recommends. Its budget best-practices page tells purchase campaigns to give each ad group 10 times its cost per sale every day, or $200 a day with no sales history yet. And ad spend is one of three bills: you also pay to make the ad and, unless you run it yourself, someone to manage the campaign.
How TikTok Charges for Ads
TikTok has no rate card. Its bidding strategies page says ads are ranked in an auction by bid and relevance. You're billed per 1,000 impressions (CPM), per optimized 1,000 impressions (oCPM), per click (CPC) or per view (CPV). Two bid strategies sit on top: Target cost per result, which aims at an average cost you set, and Maximum Results, which spends the budget for the most results.
Here is what three published benchmarks found:
| Source | Sample | Per 1,000 impressions | Click-through rate | Cost per sale |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Triple Whale | 5,900+ e-commerce brands, Aug 2025–Jul 2026 | $4.08 | 0.61% | $17.07 |
| Lebesgue | E-commerce brands, conversion campaigns, 2026 update | $4.80 | 0.61% | — (1.92% conversion rate) |
| Affect Group | US accounts, Q2 2026 average ranges, 90% its own clients | $7–$11 reach, $9–$14 traffic, $14–$22 sales, $20–$32 lead gen | — | — |
TikTok publishes no average cost per click. Divide each e-commerce CPM by the clicks it buys per 1,000 impressions and both sets land near $0.67–$0.79 a click, which is rough arithmetic on medians. Affect Group puts a landing-page click at about $0.40–$1.20 in consumer categories, and higher in B2B and finance.
The goal sets most of the price: lead campaigns pay about three times what reach campaigns do per 1,000 impressions. Format matters too: Affect Group's Q2 set puts standard In-Feed ads near $7–$9 per 1,000 impressions, Spark Ads (boosted organic posts) near $11–$12, and TopView, the guaranteed first full-screen ad, at $14 and up.
What you sell moves the cost of a sale. Triple Whale's median ran $5.46 for pets, $10.32 for beauty, $12.44 for food and beverage and $28.90 for electronics. The same report puts Meta's overall median at $15.06 per 1,000 impressions, so TikTok impressions cost about a quarter as much. Cheap impressions don't make cheap customers on their own, though: the TikTok conversion rate in that report fell to 1.56%.
TikTok's Minimum Budget and What a Month Buys
TikTok's budget article (updated July 2026) sets the floors. A daily budget must exceed $50 at the campaign level and $20 at the ad group level. A lifetime campaign budget must exceed $50, and a lifetime ad group budget must cover $20 for every day it runs, so a 31-day ad group needs at least $620. Some guides still quote a $500 lifetime minimum; TikTok's article doesn't contain one.
The same article limits how fast you can scale. Raise a budget by no more than 40% at a time during the learning phase and 30% after it, and no more often than every two days.
TikTok's recommended budgets sit well above the floor:
| Campaign optimizes for | Daily ad group budget TikTok recommends | With no cost history yet |
|---|---|---|
| Purchases or add to cart | 10 × current cost per result | $200 |
| App installs | 20 × current cost per install | $200 |
| Page views and other early events | 50 × current cost per result | $100 |
The reason is the learning phase. TikTok says volatility usually starts to decline after about 25 results or 7 days. At $17.07 a sale, 25 sales in a week takes about $61 a day per ad group. At the $20 floor, it takes three weeks.
| Daily budget | 30 days | Impressions at $4.08 per 1,000 | Sales at $17.07 each |
|---|---|---|---|
| $50 | $1,500 | about 368,000 | about 88 |
| $100 | $3,000 | about 735,000 | about 176 |
| $200 | $6,000 | about 1.47 million | about 351 |
| $500 | $15,000 | about 3.68 million | about 879 |
That table is arithmetic on Triple Whale's medians, not a forecast. Each column uses its own median, and a new account rarely buys at the median in its first weeks.
The Two Bills Besides Ad Spend
Running the campaign
- You. No fee, just your hours in TikTok Ads Manager.
- A marketplace gig. Fiverr's TikTok ads manager and TikTok ads campaign pages listed 65 different page-one gigs on November 4, 2026. 33 were TikTok Shop setups, not ad management. The 21 that set up or run TikTok ad campaigns had starting prices of $30–$350, with a median of $50. Most are one-time setups, so read what each package covers.
- An agency or freelancer. WebFX's PPC pricing guide puts paid-ads management at 10–20% of ad spend, or about $1,000–$3,000 a month. That's across ad platforms, not TikTok alone.
Some Fiverr links on this page are affiliate links: Mark Studios may earn a commission if you buy through them, at no cost to you.
Our Facebook ads management cost guide compares flat and percentage fees, YouTube ads cost and LinkedIn ads cost run the same budget math for those platforms, and Fiverr vs Upwork vs an agency works out the platform fees.
Making the ad
TikTok's In-Feed ad specs recommend vertical 9:16 video, up to 10 minutes and 500 MB. Spark Ads run organic posts instead, yours or a creator's with their authorization, and the likes, comments and follows go to the original post.
Affect Group says accounts with meaningful spend rotate creative every seven to ten days, so budget for a stream of ads. Influee, a UGC creator marketplace, puts creator videos at $200–$2,000 a piece and studio-produced ads at $2,000–$10,000+ per video.
- Edited from your footage. Our video ad editing cost guide prices ads per ad and per variant, and the short-form editing cost guide covers vertical cuts.
- Checked before upload. The free TikTok video checker tests size and length, and the safe zone checker shows what the buttons cover.
- Filmed on site. Mark films in Palm Beach, Broward and Martin counties (on-site videography) for restaurants, salons and shops, and cuts the vertical ads from that shoot.
Before You Spend: A 6-Point TikTok Budget Check
- Name the result you're paying for: sales, leads, site visits or views. Each is priced differently.
- Budget each ad group to TikTok's rule, not the floor: 10 times your cost per sale, or $200 a day with no history.
- Wait for 25 results or a week before you judge, and don't edit targeting, bids or budgets during the learning phase.
- Raise budgets in steps: no more than 40% during learning and 30% after, at most every two days.
- Have three to five ad versions made before launch, cut 9:16, and plan new ones every week or two.
- Get the management fee in writing, separate from the ad spend, with who owns the ad account and the Spark Ads authorizations.
Where Mark Studios Fits
Mark builds, runs and reports ad campaigns on Facebook and Instagram, Google search and YouTube, with TikTok on request. The ad budget is paid straight to the platform, never to Mark Studios, and the fee covers the work. The ads can be made in-house as well: vertical product cuts and UGC-style edits. Online stores can see the product ads we cut on our e-commerce video page, and beauty brands on beauty video. Mark scopes each account personally; ask for an ads quote and he emails a monthly price within one business day. We've delivered 8,000+ orders for 4,500+ clients and are Top Rated on Fiverr with a 4.9★ rating. We promise the work, not a cost per sale, because nobody controls TikTok's auction.
The Bottom Line
TikTok ads cost about $4–$5 per 1,000 impressions for e-commerce brands and $7–$32 for US campaigns by goal, and a sale cost a median $17.07 across 5,900+ brands. The minimum is just over $20 a day per ad group, but TikTok's own advice for purchase campaigns is 10 times your cost per sale, or $200 a day to start. Add the ads and the management, then judge the campaign by cost per sale, not by CPM.
