How do I run a first TikTok Ads campaign without getting it rejected?

What TikTok says, in its own words

What that means if you have just launched

• Check your category first. TikTok's advertising policies have an article for each subject. Weapons, tobacco, nicotine and illegal drugs cannot be advertised, and paid political advertising is not allowed. Financial services must be licensed and shown only to people aged 18 and over, gambling needs TikTok's certification, and dating apps must go through a TikTok sales representative. Those three change by country.
• You need a real website. TikTok's account approval FAQ says it can only approve an account that has an official website, and that a social media profile does not count.
• Finish the landing page, then leave it alone. The ad format policy rules out pages that are unfinished, pages not built for phones, and pages that ask for personal information before showing the main content. Changing the page after you create a campaign is on TikTok's list of common reasons for a suspension, and the same page says a severe violation can suspend an account at once.
• Promise only what you can show. The policy on misleading content rules out exaggerated results, absolute terms such as "Number 1", before and after comparisons and fake buttons. Content made or heavily changed by AI needs a label or a clear disclaimer, or the ad is rejected or restricted.
• Run TikTok's own five checks. None of the pages listed below says which rules reject the most ads. TikTok's best practices for ad reviews name five: a language accepted where you advertise, no instruction the app cannot carry out such as swiping up, clear video and audio, an ad that matches its landing page, and no brand, hashtag or copyrighted media used without permission.
• An edit sends the ad back to review. TikTok's table of changes says a new video, image, display name, link or targeting triggers a new review, and a change of budget, schedule or bid does not. If the review fails, the ad group is paused.

The numbers TikTok states

TikTok gives its budget figures in US dollars.

The ad formats and the file

• A video you upload. TikTok's specifications for in feed ads recommend a vertical video, 9:16, at least 540 by 960 pixels. The file may be .mp4, .mov, .mpeg, .3gp or .avi, 500 MB or less, with a bitrate of 516 kbps or more.
• A post you already made. A Spark Ad runs an existing TikTok post as the ad, your own or a creator's with their authorisation, and the likes, comments and follows it earns stay on the post. If you pay a creator for the post, read influencers and paid posts first.
• Images. Carousel Ads show several images in order, for when you have no video. The ad review FAQ, last updated February 2025, still says only video ads are allowed.

TikTok's pages disagree on length. The ad format policy says 5 to 60 seconds, the specifications say up to 10 minutes for a video you upload, and the ad review FAQ says 5 seconds to 10 minutes. A video of 5 to 60 seconds fits all three.

The pixel and the events

The TikTok Pixel is a piece of code you place on your website that shares website events with TikTok. The Events API is a second connection for the same data, and TikTok recommends using both. One of the two has to be set up before you can use the Web Conversions objective.

TikTok's standard events have fixed codes. Four that fit a new product: CompleteRegistration for a sign up, StartTrial for a free trial, Subscribe and Purchase.

Two things to know. TikTok says the Pixel's third party cookies are on by default. And TikTok's data collection standards say your landing page must disclose the data it collects, shares and uses in a privacy policy.

How Sami uses it

Sami ranks TikTok Ads against the other channels for your product, Meta Ads and Google Ads among them, and says why it is in or out. Free methods come before paid ones.

A paid step gets one week if your product is bought on the page, with the spend and the stopping line set before it starts. On TikTok that week is a budget of at least $140. Should I run ads before anyone has paid? covers whether to test at all and how big the test should be.

Sami never runs the campaign or spends the money. You do. The spend, clicks, signups and payments you bring back become dated records, and two figures say whether the week worked: your customer acquisition cost and your conversion rate.