Advertising on TikTok works in two ways: through Promote, which lives inside the app, and through TikTok Ads Manager, the platform’s full advertising system. Promote has no fixed minimum amount, while in Ads Manager every ad group needs a budget of more than 20 dollars a day. We checked every figure in this guide against TikTok’s official help pages in October 2026, because the internet is full of numbers without a source.
The two ways to advertise on TikTok
Promote is the equivalent of the “Boost” button you know from Facebook and Instagram. You open a video you have already posted, tap the three dots and choose Promote. The same tool is available in TikTok Studio, in Business Suite and on the web. You pick what you want to achieve: more views, followers or profile visits, messages and calls, visits to your website, or viewers for a LIVE. To use it you must be over 18, the video must be public and its sound must be cleared for commercial use. To promote a LIVE you need at least 1,000 followers.
TikTok Ads Manager is something else. There you build campaigns on three levels: the campaign, which sets the goal, the ad group, which sets audience, budget and schedule, and the ad, which is the video or images themselves. You get far more control over who sees the ad, you can measure sales with the TikTok Pixel, and you get reports you can compare with your other platforms.
How much Promote costs
Promote has no price list. You choose either a ready-made pack with budget, duration and audience, or your own amount and your own number of days. The cost is shown in your local currency or in TikTok Coins, and TikTok states clearly that the results of each pack are an estimate, not a guarantee. In a recent case with one of our clients, the app suggested a pack of about 25 euros for a single day, but that was the app’s suggestion, not a minimum.
You will often see the line “10 dollars gets you 1,000 views”. It comes from a 2022 article by TikTok itself and does not hold as a price today. There is no official price per view or per follower, because the cost comes out of an auction and moves with demand.
One point most people miss is how you pay. If you pay for Promote inside the app with Apple Pay, Google Pay or Coins, an extra fee from Apple or Google is added, which according to TikTok is typically around 30%. With a card or bank transfer on Android, and with any method on the web, that fee does not apply. TikTok’s official Promote payment methods page has the full table. If you promote from an iPhone, pay from your computer.
How much TikTok Ads Manager costs
Ads Manager has minimum budgets, which TikTok only states in dollars. At ad group level the daily budget must be more than 20 dollars. At campaign level, if you set a limit, it must be more than 50 dollars, but you can leave the campaign on No Limit, which TikTok itself recommends as the simplest setting. So the real minimum is more than 20 dollars a day for one ad group, and more than 40 if you run two. Over a month, that means more than 600 dollars in budget. You can find these limits on TikTok’s budget page.
The minimum is not the same as the amount that works well. When an account has no history yet, TikTok recommends about 100 dollars a day for goals like views and followers, and about 200 for sales goals. With 20 dollars the campaign runs normally, the algorithm simply learns more slowly who is interested. TikTok also advises against raising the budget by more than 40% at a time while the campaign is learning, and against changing it more often than every two days.
For Greece, payment is either prepaid or automatic, by card or PayPal. Monthly invoicing on credit is not available. 24% VAT is added, unless you enter an EU VAT number in the account’s billing details.
How TikTok charges depending on the goal
The goal you choose also decides what exactly you pay for. With Reach you pay per thousand impressions. With Video Views you pay per “focused view”, meaning someone watches the video for at least 6 seconds or interacts with it within that time. For profile visits you pay per click. For followers you pay for impressions again, but the algorithm shows the ad to the people most likely to follow you.
That is why there is no fixed cost per follower, and anyone promising you “500 followers for 100 euros” is not speaking in terms of how TikTok works. What we measure in our reports is simple: how much was spent, divided by how many new followers, customers or messages came in.
Spark Ads: advertising your own videos
When you promote a video that already exists on your account, it is called a Spark Ad. The views, likes, comments, shares and followers the ad brings stay on the original video and on your profile. Spark Ads are not only for likes, though. TikTok supports them on almost every goal, from website visits to contact forms and sales, with a button that leads wherever you want. For the Community Interaction goal, which brings followers and profile visits, they are in fact the only option.
The alternative is an ad uploaded only to Ads Manager, under the business name, without being posted on the profile. It is useful when you want to test variations without filling your account with advertising material.
Video or images
TikTok is a video platform and that is where it performs best. It does accept images too, as a Carousel, a series of images the viewer swipes through. Carousel works for traffic, sales, contact form and reach goals, but not for followers or video views. In practice, a simple 10 to 20 second phone video with a real person and a real product usually beats a polished image.
What fits an e-shop and what fits a local business
E-shop
For an e-shop the goal is sales. That means the TikTok Pixel on the site so purchases are measured, Spark Ads from videos that show the product in use, and Carousel for catalogues with many products. TikTok works best for products that look good on camera, such as clothing, cosmetics, accessories, home decor and gifts. For an e-shop selling spare parts, Google search is usually more efficient, as we explain in our guide to Google Ads costs.
Hair salon, physiotherapy clinic, local services
For a local business the goal is appointments. The Lead Generation goal fits, with a form inside TikTok, or promotion for messages and calls, or traffic to your booking page. Before and after videos at a hair salon, or a short neck exercise from a physiotherapist, are exactly the kind of content people watch on TikTok. The key question is how narrowly the ad can target your own area, and we check that in Ads Manager for each town before we start. If the targeting is not local enough, a Google Business Profile and Facebook and Instagram ads are a safer starting point for the first appointments.
When Promote is enough and when you need management
If you want to give a push to a video that is already doing well, with a small amount and no commitment, Promote is enough. Pay from the web or by card, set a specific goal and look at the results after a few days. Professional management is worth it when you want measurable sales or appointments, when you already run Google or Meta and want to compare platforms on the same terms, or when you want your account to grow steadily rather than one video at a time.
At intermedia, TikTok Ads management starts from 100 euros a month, with a one-off setup of 150 euros, and you pay the budget directly to TikTok from your own card. We connect your account through TikTok’s Business Center, without you ever giving us passwords, and the ad account stays yours. If you also run other platforms, our comparison of Google Ads and Meta Ads helps you split your budget.
Want to see whether TikTok fits your business and how much it is worth starting with? Contact us.
