More than half of marketers plan to raise their TikTok budget in 2027 (Kantar). What I buy on TikTok Ads for a scale-up, and what I leave alone.
On 5 October, Kantar published its Media Reactions 2026 study, run among 23,000 consumers in 33 markets and 800 senior marketers. First finding: more than half of marketers plan to increase their TikTok spend in 2027, ahead of YouTube and Instagram. Second finding, from the same study: the platforms whose advertising consumers prefer are Google, Amazon, YouTube, Instagram and Netflix. TikTok is not in that top five. Advertisers are rushing towards a medium their audience does not rank first. My view: TikTok is a very good medium, provided you know what you are buying there. For a scale-up, it is a creative factory and a discovery medium for under-35s. It is not, with rare exceptions, the conversion machine the dashboards promise.
TikTok advertising in France: the real audience, not the keynote one
Let us start with the numbers nobody puts in a keynote. In Médiamétrie's Audience Internet Global measurement for August 2026, TikTok has 26.2 million unique visitors a month in France, and 11.3 million a day on average. Instagram is at 45 million a month and 26.9 million a day. Snapchat, with the same monthly volume as TikTok (26.1 million), has 19.9 million daily visitors. YouTube is at 49.7 million a month and 19.5 million a day, Facebook at 52.1 and 34.4 million.
Read the ratio between the two columns carefully. On TikTok, 43% of the month's visitors are there on any given day. On Instagram, 60%. On Snapchat, 76%. TikTok has a broad audience and a much narrower daily presence than people think. For a reach campaign it is a complement, not the base. In France the base is still Instagram and Facebook, and for 15-24s, Snapchat is not dead.
TikTok gives other numbers. In March 2026, at the One to One Retail E-commerce show in Monaco, TikTok France head Mehdi Meghzifene announced 29 million users in France, more than 65% of them over 25, as reported by FashionNetwork. The two measurements do not count the same thing, and I am not accusing anyone of lying. But I plan with Médiamétrie, because it is the only measurement I can put in the same table as television and out-of-home. When a seller counts its own customers, it is always right.
TikTok Shop: affiliation, not advertising
The topic that excites the market is TikTok Shop. TikTok France's figures, again presented in Monaco: 33,000 sellers in France one year after launch, double the previous year, more than 100,000 across Europe, sales up 113% over six months, live shopping at 20% of sales and discovery video at 43%.
To understand what sits behind that, I prefer the Kalodata figures analysed by Effinity: 50.5 million euros of sales in France between 7 October and 5 November 2025, on a scope covering the top 450 shops and top 500 products. Three figures from that analysis say it all. The median revenue per shop is 1,500 euros for the period. Best-sellers have a median price of 21 to 22 euros, a median commission of 13% paid to creators, and a median of 65 creators per product. And 84% of the large shops' sales go through affiliation, meaning creators paid on commission.
In other words, TikTok Shop is not an advertising channel. It is a marketplace driven by affiliates, which works for products under 30 euros, with high margins, pushed by dozens of creators paid on results. If you sell a 90-euro product, a subscription or B2B, it does not concern you. If you sell beauty or food supplements at 20 euros, it is one more line in your distribution, to be judged like a marketplace, with the same question as for retail media: demand created, or demand captured?
What TikTok just announced, and what it changes
On 5 October, at Advertising Week New York, TikTok presented its autumn line-up. Search campaigns automated by Smart+. A Smart+ Creative Selection that puts your assets, creatives generated by its Symphony AI and creator content into a single approval flow. GMV Max, the automated buying tool for TikTok Shop, which now factors affiliate commissions and coupons into its calculation. An ad network, TikTok Ad Network, formerly Pangle, opened to US advertisers across nearly 400,000 third-party apps. And two agents, Buy Direct and Agentic Leads, not yet available in Europe.
My reading is the same as for Meta and Google, and I detailed it in Advantage+ and Performance Max: how far should you let go. On bidding and delivery, the machine is better than you. On exclusions and measurement, it is judge and jury. And one new point of vigilance: a network of 400,000 third-party apps is no longer TikTok. It is mobile app inventory, with the quality issues that implies. The day it reaches Europe, I take it out of my TikTok campaigns and judge it separately, if it deserves judging at all.
One last piece of news that says something about the market: since 8 October, Meta has refused ads from ByteDance, TikTok's parent company, in seven countries including the United States, Canada and Japan, including third-party campaigns linking to its services, according to Bloomberg and Reuters as cited by Minted. France is not affected. But when the world's two largest social ad sellers treat each other as enemies, a scale-up that has bet everything on one of them is not in a comfortable position. I wrote about it in the glass ceiling syndrome.
My rule for TikTok Ads
Never a creative recycled from Meta: TikTok is won with content shot for TikTok, by people who know how to talk to a camera. A reach campaign separate from conversion campaigns, judged in contacts among under-35s, with brand search volume as the indicator. TikTok Shop only if the selling price is under 30 euros with enough margin to pay a 13% commission. And no third-party app network inside a TikTok campaign.
What I buy on TikTok for a scale-up
Creative, first. TikTok is the best creative lab on the market, because the algorithm gives every video a chance regardless of your follower count. I have videos shot by creators, buy the rights, and run them as Spark Ads, under the creator's identity. The mechanism is the one I describe in buy creators the way you buy media: a test budget per video, a cut-off rule, and the winners going on to Instagram and connected TV. A creative that holds on TikTok holds everywhere.
Reach among under-35s. Bought on CPM, on reach and frequency, separate from conversion campaigns. With 11 million daily visitors, TikTok does not replace Instagram. But on an 18 to 30 target, it adds contacts Instagram no longer delivers at the same price, and it adds them in a context where people watch their screen full-frame, sound on. I measure it as I measure out-of-home: brand searches, direct traffic, before and after.
Leads, when the mechanism is built for the platform. Social can generate leads, provided the offer is designed for the feed and not copied from a website form. For Essity, a gamified social campaign produced 14 million impressions and leads at around 6 euros, with first-party data to show for it. That was not on TikTok, and I am not promising you the same figure. But the principle is the same: on an entertainment platform, the offer has to entertain before it asks for an email.
What I leave
I leave TikTok as the main conversion channel for a product over 100 euros, a subscription with commitment or a B2B offer. Not because it never works, but because the platform's attribution will tell you it works well before your bank account confirms it. I leave Smart+ without exclusion lists, for the same reason as Performance Max without brand keywords as negatives. I leave the third-party app network as long as it cannot be bought separately. And I leave the Kantar race: "more than half of marketers will increase their TikTok budget" is not an argument. It is a description of the crowd.
What I tell founders
TikTok is three years ahead on ad creative and three years behind on measurement. Take the first, be wary of the second. Shoot creative for the platform, buy reach among the young the way you would buy TV, judge TikTok Shop as a commission marketplace, and keep your expensive conversions elsewhere as long as you cannot measure them outside the platform. If you want to look at what place TikTok deserves in your plan, and at what cost per contact, we can do it together in a free audit. And to place young audiences in your mix, the media mix simulator gives a first split in two minutes.
