How TikTok drives offline sales impact for advertisers

Throughout 2021, TikTok worked with 3rd parties to validate the ability of TikTok ads to drive offline sales for advertisers. As part of these efforts, TikTok executed a series of NCSolutions offline sales lift studies in the US and a suite of marketing mix modeling meta analyses across the globe in partnership with Nielsen. All of this work was designed to help advertisers answer the question, "Can TikTok drive offline sales outcomes and positive return on advertising spend?"

Marketing mix modeling

Three separate Nielsen Media Mix Model Meta Analyses commissioned by TikTok were executed in North America, Europe and Southeast Asia, to begin to understand TikTok’s ability to generate incremental return for consumer packaged goods advertisers. A marketing mix model is a statistical regression used to isolate and quantify the effect media has on advertisers offline sales. By creating a model an advertiser can answer questions like, "What is the optimal TikTok budget to maximize offline sales?"

According to these studies, TikTok drives positive paid media ROAS and offline sales efficiency across the CPG vertical. The US, for example, saw a 14% higher paid media ROAS versus all digital media measured in the models and 2X the offline sales efficiency, while the numbers for Europe and Southeast Asia were even higher.

Nielsen CPG Media Mix Model Meta Analysis commissioned by Tik Tok showed in-feed video as the most efficient performer in marketing mix Models*. In-feed campaigns also have further opportunity to scale. Nielsen's model indicates that advertisers in this analysis could increase in-feed impression volume by 50% while maintaining efficient offline sales lift.

NC Solutions sales lift studies

In order to find out what the numbers could look like for real, in-market campaign sales lift, TikTok commissioned a series of NCSolutions sales lift studies. According to the results, TikTok has shown an ability to generate incremental sales and positive ROAS for CPG advertisers.

Among the 16 commissioned studies, 14 generated significant sales lift. The average ROAS for these studies was 2X the NCS median campaign performance benchmark.

Both of the studies mentioned above demonstrate the ability of TikTok ads to drive offline sales, especially for CPG advertisers. We look forward to building upon these initial findings in future studies and it is our hope that clients reproduce through their own media mix models a view on TikTok's true advertiser value.

*Source: TikTok Marketing Science CPG Media Mix Model Meta-Analyses, US, Conducted by Nielsen 2020