Meta vs TikTok ads for small brands

Who will you reach on Meta and TikTok?

Meta is bigger and older; TikTok is smaller and younger. The gap is clear in both markets.

In the UK, Ofcom found 39% of TikTok's visitors are 18 to 34, and that 18 to 34-year-olds spend 49 minutes a day on it. Facebook's audience leans slightly towards over-35s and broadly matches the population. Pew's US survey ran from January to June 2026; Ofcom's figures are from Ipsos audience measurement of UK internet users aged 18 and over.

What creative does each platform need?

TikTok rewards video that looks like TikTok: vertical 9:16, sound on, a person talking to camera, and a reason to keep watching in the first seconds. TikTok's own specs recommend 9:16 for in-feed ads. Polished brand ads tend to get scrolled past.

Meta is more forgiving. The same vertical video works on Reels and Stories, a square cut works in feeds, and still images and carousels can still sell. That makes Meta easier to start with if you only have product photos.

On both, the creative does most of the work. In our experience fixing the creative moves results more than any targeting change, which is why we make it or cast creators for it.

What is the minimum budget for Meta and TikTok ads?

TikTok sets a hard floor: a daily campaign budget must exceed $50 and a daily ad group budget must exceed $20, as written in TikTok's help centre in dollars. Check the equivalent in your account's currency.

Meta's technical minimums are low, so the real floor is set by the learning phase. Meta says an ad set generally needs about 50 optimisation events, such as purchases, in the 7 days after its last significant edit to leave learning. A rough budget check is 50 times your expected cost per sale, per week, per ad set.

Example: if you expect a sale to cost £20, one ad set optimising for purchases needs about £1,000 a week to give Meta the data it wants. If that's out of reach, optimise for an earlier step, like add to basket, or run fewer ad sets.

How long is the learning phase?

Either way, judge a new campaign after about a week, not after a day, and resist editing it daily. That's the advice we give every client and the one most often ignored.

Which should a small brand start with?

Our starting point by product type. These are recommendations, not rules; your own numbers should overrule them within a month.

If you can only afford one, pick the one where your customers already are and run it properly. Two half-funded platforms is the most common mistake we see in small accounts.

Do Meta and TikTok count results the same way?

Not quite, which matters when you compare them. Meta's default attribution is 7-day click, with 1-day view and 1-day engage-through, and since March 2026 click-through only counts clicks on the ad's link. TikTok's web campaigns default to 7-day click and 1-day view, and TikTok also offers engaged view-through, counting people who watched at least 6 seconds and converted later.

Both platforms will claim some of the same sales. Use your own store or analytics data as the referee. Our creator ROI guide explains how.

How we run Meta and TikTok ads at TBC

1. Audit: we look at your account, creative and funnel and tell you what's costing you.
2. Plan: audiences from cold reach to remarketing, budgets per stage and the creative each needs.
3. Run: launch, test, and move budget to what works, week by week.
4. Report: plain weekly numbers on spend, sales and return, not a slide deck of impressions.

Campaigns run on your own ad account, so the data and spend history stay yours. On one account we took return on ad spend from 1.3x to 6.7x in 30 days by fixing targeting and creative. See paid social or start a brief.

Questions

Is TikTok or Meta cheaper for small businesses?

Neither is cheaper by default. TikTok has a higher minimum, at more than $50 a day per campaign; Meta's minimum is lower, but it needs about 50 conversions a week per ad set to optimise well.

Can I run the same video on both?

Yes, if it's vertical and made to look native. Make a 1:1 cut for Meta feeds and check the text sits clear of each platform's buttons.

How long before I know if ads are working?

About a week for a first read, once the learning phase has had its data. Give a new platform a month before deciding.

Should I use my own ad account or the agency's?

Your own. The data, pixel history and spend history are assets, and they should stay with you if you change agency.