Douyin advertising: formats, bidding and what actually converts

Your Douyin (抖音) ads spend every day. The cost per result jumps around, and nobody on the account can say which format is doing the work.

That’s a format question first and a bidding question second. Here’s what each product does.

Format	What it is for	How it is bought	What it costs	Verdict
In-feed	Reach, leads, traffic	Auction: CPM, CPC or oCPM	Ours: CPM 10 to 50 yuan, CPC from 0.2 yuan	The workhorse. Buy it first
Search	People typing your category	Ocean Engine keyword auction	From 100 yuan a day	Underbought. Pair it with in-feed
Live-room ads	Viewers into a live room	Qianchuan auction, ROI target	Prepaid, no published minimum	Only with a staffed room and a shop
DOU+	Boost one video	Self-serve order	100 yuan to 5 million yuan an order	For testing, not for scaling
Brand Takeover	The app-open moment	Reserved, by day or CPM	No current public price	Launch days only
TopView	App-open video that drops into the feed	Reserved, by day or CPM	52.8 million yuan a day list price (2020)	A dated launch, with search already live

Figures marked “ours” are the planning ranges on our advertising services page, not a platform average, and they cover media spend only. Every other figure is sourced and dated below, and every source was checked twice in October 2026.

How Douyin advertising is sold, and who sells it

Douyin (抖音) is TikTok’s sister app inside China. Its ads are sold by Ocean Engine (巨量引擎), ByteDance’s ad business, and the bidding platform changed its name in December 2025.

From December 22, 2025, Ocean Engine’s bidding platform 巨量广告 was renamed 巨量营销 (Ocean Engine Marketing), and the “ad” level inside a campaign was renamed “unit”. Source: Ocean Engine open platform (巨量引擎开放平台), changelog, December 2025. https://open.oceanengine.com/changelog/1852282960952776

Ocean Engine Marketing sells in-feed, search and lead ads, and you pay up front.

Ocean Engine bills in advance, by CPC, OCPC, CPM, OCPM and other modes. Its agreement says the platform sets and publishes the minimum top-up. Source: Ocean Engine (巨量引擎), platform service agreement, in force January 2026. https://sf1-cdn-tos.douyinstatic.com/obj/ies-hotsoon-draft/account_center/ee525166-d060-401d-9d2f-83359617acf0.html

The second auction is Qianchuan (巨量千川), built for selling inside Douyin: products, shop listings and live rooms. It now belongs to Douyin’s e-commerce business.

In March 2025 the Qianchuan team formally moved into Douyin E-commerce. Source: Xinhua Finance (新华财经), via Sina Finance, December 2025. https://finance.sina.com.cn/jjxw/2025-12-15/doc-inhavwnp4307756.shtml

Qianchuan’s agreement lists the in-app boost tool for shops (小店随心推) as one of its entry points. It bills by CPC, OCPC, CPM or OCPM, and sets and publishes its own minimum top-up. Source: Qianchuan (巨量千川), platform service agreement, updated December 2025. https://lf3-cdn-tos.draftstatic.com/obj/ies-hotsoon-draft/qianchuan/a96a6a25-17d8-4083-9529-0c79102aa0b9.html

The reservation book is brand advertising: the app-open formats, sold by the day or by the thousand views. Neither auction publishes a minimum deposit, so any floor you’re quoted comes from whoever opened the account.

In-feed ads and the three-second rule

An in-feed ad is a video in Douyin’s (抖音) recommended feed, the For You scroll. The best ones run from the brand’s own account and look like a post.

Ocean Engine’s native ads run from the advertiser’s own Douyin account and keep normal interactions such as follows and profile visits. Ocean Engine says this “can maximize ad conversion”. Source: Ocean Engine (巨量引擎), native ads manual, December 2022. https://support.oceanengine.com/support/content/130523

Which brings us to the three-second rule. It turns up in most Douyin briefs. Ocean Engine (巨量引擎) hasn’t published a figure for it on any page we could find.

What it does publish points the same way. Its premium format is built around three seconds, and its spec sheet polices the very first frame.

Ocean Engine’s spec sheet splits TopView into a “first 3s” style and an “after 3s” style. For in-feed video, black may cover no more than 60% of the first frame. Source: Ocean Engine (巨量引擎), creative spec sheet in the national rate card, October 2020. https://lf3-ttcdn-tos.pstatp.com/obj/cognition-public/attachment_pdf_31204ca42bb9640459f1ace869f45701.pdf

And its 2026 review rules list the openings that get an ad treated as low quality.

Ocean Engine’s user experience rules list low-quality creative patterns, including poor production, an unclear picture, slideshow or PPT-style video and large blocks of on-screen text. Source: Ocean Engine rules center (巨量广告规则中心), user experience risk rules, January 2026. https://support.oceanengine.com/support/content/137617?spaceId=171

That list reads like a description of a translated Western ad. It opens on a logo card, then pans slowly over a paragraph of subtitles.

Here is how we build the opening instead. It is our working checklist, not platform data.

Seconds	What is on screen	What it does
0 to 1	A face, a hand or the product in use, mid-action	Stops the thumb. No logo card
1 to 3	One spoken line in Mandarin, with captions	Names the problem the product fixes
3 to 10	The proof: a demo, a before and after, a price	Earns the click
10 to the end	The offer and one action	Search the brand, visit the shop, fill the form

Shoot it vertical, in China, with Chinese speakers. Don’t re-cut a global spot and add subtitles.

TopView and Brand Takeover: when the premium is worth it

Both formats buy the first thing people see when they open Douyin (抖音). Brand Takeover is the splash ad (开屏), and it is short.

A splash ad shows for a fixed time: three seconds for a static image, four for an animated one and five for video. It is billed by CPM. Source: Ocean Engine help center (巨量引擎帮助中心), May 2020. https://www.oceanengine.com/help/guanggao-zhanxian

TopView is the longer version. It opens the app full screen, then runs on in the recommended feed, where people can like and share it.

The last public price list is old, so treat it as a sense of scale.

In its rate card for the fourth quarter of 2020, Ocean Engine listed TopView first-refresh at 52.8 million yuan a day. TopView CPM cost 320 yuan in core cities, with orders from 200,000 yuan net. TopView took 10 to 60 seconds of vertical video. Source: Ocean Engine (巨量引擎), national rate card, October 2020. https://lf3-ttcdn-tos.pstatp.com/obj/cognition-public/attachment_pdf_31204ca42bb9640459f1ace869f45701.pdf

No newer card is public. Our own planning line for TopView starts at the same 200,000 yuan.

One rule covers every app-open ad in China.

Splash-screen ads shown when an app starts must carry a clear close mark and close with one click. Source: State Administration for Market Regulation (国家市场监督管理总局), Internet Advertising Measures, Order 72, in force May 2023. https://www.gov.cn/gongbao/2023/issue_10506/202306/content_6885261.html

So when is the premium worth it? Only for a dated launch, with search ads already live and a video that works as a normal in-feed post. A TopView sends people to search your name, and without search ads you don’t control what they find.

Search ads on Douyin, which most brands ignore

A lot of Douyin (抖音) search starts with a video.

53% of Douyin searches come after watching a video. The other 47% are started by the user. Source: China Daily (中国日报网), reporting Ocean Engine’s 2025 search white paper, November 2025. https://caijing.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202511/25/WS69252082a310942cc499329e.html

Ocean Engine says search traffic converts 90% better than recommended-feed traffic, and 72% of users look only at the first screen of results. Source: Beijing Daily (京报网), reporting Ocean Engine’s 2025 search white paper, November 2025. https://news.bjd.com.cn/2025/11/25/11425198.shtml

Why do brands skip it? They think of Douyin as a feed. Their buyers watch a video, then type the product name to compare. And the entry cost is low.

Search ads in the 7-day steady mode need a budget of at least 2,000 yuan. Custom schedules need at least 100 yuan a day. Source: Ocean Engine open platform (巨量引擎开放平台), changelog, September 2024. https://open.oceanengine.com/changelog/1810687227706499

Bid on your brand name first (in Chinese, and in the spelling people actually type). Then add three to five category terms. Only the first screen counts, so bid to be on it.

Live-stream ads and traffic to a room

Live-room ads are bought in Qianchuan (巨量千川), and in 2024 it changed how they’re sold.

On May 14, 2024, Qianchuan launched omni-channel promotion for products and upgraded the live-room version. Source: 36Kr (36氪), May 2024. https://m.36kr.com/newsflashes/2775491039724416

Omni-channel promotion (全域推广) is bought against sales, and it takes over the room.

For a live room, omni-channel promotion optimizes overall payment ROI: the room’s total sales during the campaign, divided by its spend. While it runs, every other plan promoting that live room is paused. Source: Qianchuan (巨量千川), omni-channel promotion agreement, June 2024. https://lf26-cdn-tos.draftstatic.com/obj/ies-hotsoon-draft/qianchuan/dfa2a6ab-7eab-4074-a04f-ce528885576d.html

That second line trips teams up. Switch it on and your older room campaigns stop.

A live-room campaign needs a room worth sending people to: a host, a shop, stock and someone answering questions. Without them, the ROI target has nothing to work with. Our Douyin marketing cost guide prices the staff.

That covers the products. Most of the money is won or lost in the next part.

How Douyin ad bidding works, plainly

In short, you bid on a result and pay for views.

Ocean Engine labels oCPM as “目标转化出价-按展示付费”: a bid on the target conversion, paid per impression. Source: Ocean Engine open platform (巨量引擎开放平台), changelog, September 2025. https://open.oceanengine.com/changelog/1843402376347850

So you tell Ocean Engine (巨量引擎) what a lead or an order is worth to you. It then bids on every view for you. It bids higher for people it expects to convert and lower for everyone else. It charges you per thousand views at the prices those auctions cleared. When its predictions hold, your average cost per result lands near the target. When they don’t, it drifts, sometimes a long way.

The bid works as a target.

Then you pick a strategy. Ocean Engine set out the options in 2023.

On the upgraded platform, bid and billing are set at the project level. New bid strategies added “max delivery” (放量投放) and “cost cap” (控制成本上限). Billing options are CPM, CPC, oCPM and oCPC. Source: Ocean Engine open platform (巨量引擎开放平台), changelog, February 2023. https://open.oceanengine.com/changelog/1756250989174795

The stable cost strategy (稳定成本) no longer lets advertisers choose a delivery speed and runs at accelerated delivery. Advertisers who want even pacing are pointed to the optimal cost strategy (最优成本). Source: Ocean Engine open platform (巨量引擎开放平台), changelog, June 2023. https://open.oceanengine.com/changelog/1769750815636488

A new ad goes through a learning period while the system works out who converts. Ocean Engine tracks it as a formal status.

Ocean Engine’s API returns a learning-period status (learning_phase) for each ad. Source: Ocean Engine open platform (巨量引擎开放平台), changelog, December 2022. https://open.oceanengine.com/changelog/1751541589934215

How many conversions end it, and which edits restart it, is not on any open platform page. The numbers that circulate come from courses and forums, so we don’t repeat them.

What’s published is the guarantee. If the system overshoots your target cost by enough, the platform compensates you in ad credit, under conditions. Qianchuan (巨量千川) publishes its rules in full.

Qianchuan’s cost guarantee runs from first delivery to midnight on the third day. A plan needs at least 6 conversions, or 2 in search, and a cost more than 20% over the bid. Bid or targeting may each be changed at most twice a day. The refund is paid as ad credit, valid for one year. Source: Douyin E-commerce Learning Center (抖音电商学习中心), Qianchuan cost guarantee rules, December 2025. https://school.jinritemai.com/doudian/web/articlev0/aHMNDfneBP7r

For ROI bidding, the guarantee pays when actual ROI falls below 80% of the target. The ROI target or targeting may each be changed at most twice a day. Source: Douyin E-commerce Learning Center (抖音电商学习中心), Qianchuan ROI cost guarantee rules, December 2025. https://school.jinritemai.com/doudian/web/article/aHQbPJNKixFy

The main Ocean Engine platform runs its own version. Its thresholds sit in a help center that doesn’t publish them openly, but the API shows the payout.

Since June 2024 Ocean Engine’s API returns each project’s cost guarantee status and the amount paid out. Source: Ocean Engine open platform (巨量引擎开放平台), changelog, June 2024. https://open.oceanengine.com/changelog/1802994108997770

Then there’s one-click boost (一键起量), which buys volume fast.

Ocean Engine describes one-click boost as “a cost-controllable aggressive bid-raising tool”. Source: Ocean Engine open platform (巨量引擎开放平台), changelog archive, May 2020. https://open.oceanengine.com/changelog/1740034645231629

On Qianchuan, spend and conversions from boost tools don’t count toward the guarantee.

Here’s how the settings compare.

Setting	What you set	What you pay	What protects you
oCPM, stable cost	A target cost per result	Per thousand views	A cost guarantee, if you leave it alone
oCPM, cost cap	A ceiling per result	Per thousand views	The ceiling itself
Max delivery	A budget	Per thousand views	No cost target to guarantee
ROI target (Qianchuan)	Sales per yuan spent	Per thousand views	Credit if ROI lands below 80% of target
One-click boost	Extra spend for volume	On top of the plan	Outside the Qianchuan guarantee

Creative rules that decide delivery

Two kinds of rule decide whether a Douyin (抖音) ad runs: the law, and the platform’s quality review.

The law first. For a foreign brand, two rules matter most.

Advertising may not use terms such as “national-level”, “highest grade” or “best”. The fine for an advertiser runs from 200,000 to 1 million yuan. Source: Advertising Law of the People’s Republic of China (广告法), as amended October 2018, via gov.cn. https://www.gov.cn/guoqing/2021-10/29/content_5647620.htm

Paid content that sells through reviews or experience sharing with a purchase link must be clearly labeled “广告” (advertisement). Source: State Administration for Market Regulation (国家市场监督管理总局), Internet Advertising Measures, Order 72, in force May 2023. https://www.gov.cn/gongbao/2023/issue_10506/202306/content_6885261.html

“Best”, “number one”, “world-leading”. Global copy is full of them, and each one is a rejection waiting to happen.

Then the quality review, which is where we see foreign ads stall. An ad can be legal and still get throttled.

Qianchuan sorts low-quality content into four classes: exaggeration, discomfort, low-quality content and low-quality creative. Measures include showing it less, limiting delivery and taking plans offline, and advertisers may see spend slow down. Source: Douyin E-commerce Learning Center (抖音电商学习中心), Qianchuan low-quality content notice, August 2022. https://school.jinritemai.com/doudian/web/articlev0/aHVMP6peVA36

The notice dates from 2022 and is still live. The 2026 Ocean Engine (巨量引擎) rules above cover the same ground.

Overseas advertisers get their own rules, and they keep changing.

Ocean Engine’s rules center posted review-rule changes for overseas advertisers on February 10 and July 13, 2026. Source: Ocean Engine rules center (巨量广告规则中心), February and July 2026. https://support.oceanengine.com/support/content/206252?spaceId=171 https://support.oceanengine.com/support/content/211775?spaceId=171

Check the current text before each campaign.

In practice:

1. No absolute claims in the copy, the voiceover or the on-screen text.
2. Shoot real footage. Slideshows, subtitle walls and blurry clips are on the low-quality list.
3. Label creator content with a purchase link as an ad.
4. Get a Chinese speaker to read every line of on-screen text before review.

Benchmarks: CPM, CPC and cost per order

No platform publishes an average Douyin (抖音) CPM, CPC or cost per order. We looked in Chinese and English, in platform pages, filings and the trade press. What circulates comes from agencies and anonymous posts. These are the figures we can stand behind, checked in October 2026.

Metric	Figure	Where it comes from
In-feed CPM	10 to 50 yuan	Ours, planning range
In-feed CPC	From 0.2 yuan	Ours, planning range
In-feed daily budget	From 1,000 yuan	Ours, planning range
Search budget	From 100 yuan a day, or 2,000 for 7 days	Ocean Engine, 2024
DOU+ order	100 yuan to 5 million yuan	Ocean Engine SDK, 2025
TopView CPM	320 yuan in core cities, list price	Ocean Engine rate card, 2020
Cost per order	Not published	No dated source

TheRedScroll plans Douyin in-feed from 1,000 yuan a day, with CPC from 0.2 yuan and CPM of 10 to 50 yuan. TopView starts at 200,000 yuan. Source: TheRedScroll, advertising services page, checked October 2026. https://www.theredscroll.com/services/advertising/

A DOU+ order must be 10,000 to 500 million fen, which is 100 yuan to 5 million yuan. Source: Ocean Engine (巨量引擎), Marketing API SDK, March 2025. https://github.com/oceanengine/ad_open_sdk_go/blob/master/models/model_douplus_order_create_v3_0_request.go

Our fee for running the ads is on our pricing page. Ad spend is billed separately, with no markup.

Your own cost per result is the benchmark that matters. Take two weeks of spend from the Ocean Engine or Qianchuan report and divide it by leads or paid orders. Do it for each format. The gap between formats tells you where the next yuan goes.

The three mistakes that burn a Douyin budget

When we audit Douyin (抖音) accounts, the same three keep turning up.

1. Touching the bid every day. The Qianchuan guarantee allows two bid edits a day at most and runs to midnight on day three. Set a target, leave it alone for those three days, then judge.

2. Paying to push a video that doesn’t work on its own. An ad carries a good video further. It won’t fix a weak one. A slideshow or a subtitle wall hits the low-quality rules and gets throttled, whatever the bid. Test with DOU+ first and put money only behind the videos people already watch.

3. Feed on, search off. Just over half of Douyin searches start after someone watches a video. If you aren’t on the first screen when they type your name, you’ve paid to create interest and someone else can take the click.

Sometimes nobody did anything wrong. A small budget can sit in learning for a long time, and a category with strict review moves slowly. Check both before you blame the agency.

Frequently asked questions

How does Douyin ad bidding work?

Douyin’s auctions bill by CPM, CPC, oCPM or oCPC. With oCPM, you set a target cost for a result, such as a lead or an order, and pay per thousand views. The system bids on each view for you. Qianchuan compensates big overshoots in ad credit, but only if you change the bid or targeting twice a day at most.

What is a typical CPM on Douyin?

No platform average is published. Our planning range for in-feed is 10 to 50 yuan per thousand views, with CPC from 0.2 yuan. The last public rate card, from 2020, listed TopView at 320 yuan CPM in core cities. Your own account history is a better benchmark than any market figure.

Do Douyin search ads work for foreign brands?

Yes, if people search your brand or your category. Ocean Engine says 53% of Douyin searches come after watching a video, and search traffic converts 90% better than feed traffic. Entry is low: 100 yuan a day on a custom schedule. Bid on your brand name first, then a few category terms in natural Chinese.

Get a second opinion on your Douyin account

Book a call and keep your Ocean Engine or Qianchuan account open. We’ll go through the bid strategy, the edit history, the creative and your search coverage, and tell you which format is carrying the spend. Our advertising services page and our Douyin agency page show how we run the platform. To size the monthly spend before the call, try our China social media budget calculator.