It’s time to level up attribution for your TikTok campaigns.
TikTok is one of the most powerful product discovery tools around. TikTok’s own in-app shopping platform, TikTok Shop, generated close to $5 billion in sales in 2024.
But, maybe more importantly, TikTok consistently drives significant amounts of traffic back to Amazon and to DTC sites.
Shoppers also regularly start their product search journey on TikTok.
Many brands have ramped up their TikTok presence in the last few years. Plenty are running TikTok ads, or are hiring influencers to post on their behalf and refer traffic, or both.
Either way, we’re reaching a point where most brands we work with are looking for better ways to measure the results of their TikTok strategy. Attribution on TikTok can be trickier than on other platforms, especially because TikTok users don’t often click links.
But brands now have better tools at their disposal. Let’s talk it through.
How do I track my TikTok ads data?
This month, Intentwise rolled out our new data pipeline for TikTok ads. Intentwise Analytics Cloud customers now have a choice: We can pipeline your TikTok ads data directly into our platform, or we can bring it into your existing reporting system.
Either way, we’re making it possible to see your TikTok ads performance in the same view where you already analyze your Amazon and Walmart data.
Instead of repeatedly logging into a web of disparate ad consoles, it’s now easier than ever to compare and contrast how you’re doing on all of these channels.
Intentwise can bring you dozens of data points about your TikTok ads, such as:
- Reach
- Impressions
- Clicks
- CPCs
- Conversions
- Engagement (think likes, follows, comments, shares, profile visits)
- Demographics (specifically the gender breakdown of the impressions)
…and much more. You can find the full documentation of the TikTok metrics we track here.
And for what it’s worth, we’ll soon be adding the ability to data for TikTok Shop—TikTok’s in-app shopping site—to our pipeline. Sign up here if you’re interested.
Can I see how TikTok influences DTC sales?
TikTok ads are easily tied to your DTC site through the TikTok Pixel. It works just like when you’re using Meta ads: The pixel will measure which shoppers arrive on your website from the social media platform and then what actions they take.
With the TikTok ads data you get from Intentwise, you can therefore track how many people visit your DTC site after seeing a TikTok ad—and what they do after landing on your DTC site.
Tally up how many add to cart, how many make a purchase, and other key actions. This is a very direct way to connect your TikTok ads back to sales on your own website.
What if I want to attribute Amazon sales to TikTok traffic?
TikTok is good at attributing sales and adds to cart on your DTC site back to its ads. But what if you want to correlate your TikTok ads or influencer marketing campaigns back to sales on Amazon?
This is a bit tricky—but it’s not impossible.
One strategy is to use Amazon Attribution links. With Amazon Attribution, you can create your own custom attribution tag that you add to all of your external links.
In this case, you could generate a custom Amazon Attribution link that you place on your TikTok bio, for instance, and as the CTA for your TikTok ads.
Amazon is able to track which people visit your Amazon product page from TikTok, and then what they do after. How many add to cart? How many make a purchase?
Of course, there are important limitations here. Mainly: TikTok is not the most link-forward platform. Amazon Attribution is likely vastly undercounting the number of shoppers who land on your Amazon page after first seeing you on TikTok.
Plenty of TikTok users will find your product by doing their own search, rather than clicking a link.
But running Amazon Attribution links for TikTok does get you a rough idea of how your TikTok ads are performing. This is especially true if you gather a lot of historical Amazon Attribution data (which you easily can do in Intentwise Analytics Cloud).
If a new TikTok campaign leads to a notable increase in Amazon Attribution-clicked links, paired with a general increase in search volume on Amazon, you can correlate this all together to have a decent picture of how your TikTok campaign worked.
You can also offer unique coupon codes to TikTok users, which does give you another mechanism for linking TikTok content back to Amazon sales.
