How to Set Up Your TikTok Ads Manager and Business Center

To get started, visit the TikTok Ads Manager sign-up page. TikTok periodically offers ad credit bonuses for new advertisers — you can claim the current TikTok Ads bonus to see what is available, as the offers change over time.

The sign-up process follows these steps:

1. Enter your email address and create a password, or sign up directly with your existing TikTok account.
2. Complete the human verification challenge.
3. Enter the two-factor authentication code sent to your email.
4. Fill in your business name, website URL, industry, and phone number.
5. Select your country, currency, and time zone.

Pay close attention to your currency and time zone. These settings affect how you are billed and cannot be changed after account creation, so choose carefully before clicking confirm.

Once inside the Ads Manager, you will be prompted to accept TikTok's anti-discrimination ad policy before you can start building campaigns.

Before launching your first campaign, familiarise yourself with the main navigation areas:

• Dashboard — A high-level performance overview once campaigns are live.
• Campaign — Where you create and monitor campaigns, ad groups, and individual ads, including KPIs and budget pacing.
• Tools — The most important tab for initial setup. It includes:
  • Audience — Build lookalike audiences from website visitors or customer lists.
  • Creative Library — Browse competitor ads for inspiration and use video editing or ad preview tools.
  • Events — Where you set up the TikTok Pixel (covered in the next section).
• TikTok One — Accessible from the hamburger menu, this shows top-performing TikTok ads to spark creative ideas.
• TikTok Symphony — Also under the hamburger menu, this is TikTok's AI creative hub. It lets you translate videos into different languages, animate images, generate avatars, write scripts, or produce complete TikTok ads using AI. TikTok is actively expanding this feature set.

For a deeper look at researching what is already working before you spend, see the guide on finding winning ads using TikTok Creative Center.

Setting up conversion tracking before you run your first ad is strongly recommended. The pixel feeds data back to TikTok's algorithm so it can optimise toward specific actions — such as add-to-cart or purchase events — rather than simply serving impressions.

To install the pixel:

1. Go to Tools → Events.
2. Click Connect Data Source and select Website.
3. Enter your website URL.
4. Choose your platform: Shopify, Wix, WordPress, or another supported partner, or install manually.
5. For Shopify, select it from the list and follow the in-app installation guide — the process involves searching for the TikTok app in the Shopify App Store and completing the connection through a series of accept prompts.
6. Once installed, the Events Manager will display incoming pixel data, which you can then reference when selecting optimisation goals inside a campaign.

If you run a Shopify store, the dedicated guide on running TikTok Ads for Shopify covers the pixel connection and campaign setup in full detail.

Navigate to Account Setup inside the Ads Manager to complete these important steps.

Business Verification

Verifying your identity increases TikTok's trust in your account, which reduces the likelihood of ads being rejected and minimises potential account issues down the line. To verify:

• Select whether you are an individual or a registered business.
• Provide your business name and upload supporting documents such as a business license or certification number.

Billing Information

Add your VAT number, business address, primary contact, and billing email in the same Account Setup section.

Account Health

TikTok provides an Account Health indicator showing customer feedback scores and ad group status. Checking this periodically helps you catch any policy issues early.

Brand Safety Hub

Under the Brand Safety Hub, configure your inventory filter to control which content categories your ads appear alongside. Selecting Standard Inventory excludes violent and explicit content, protecting your brand reputation.

Go to Payments in the Ads Manager to connect a credit card (Visa, Mastercard, or American Express) or PayPal. You have two options:

• Automatic billing — TikTok deducts spend from your card as it accrues.
• Manual top-up — Add a fixed balance (for example, $500) and TikTok draws from that until it runs out. This gives you tighter spend control.

Invoices for all spend are downloadable directly from the Payments section, useful for accounting and VAT reporting.

To run Spark Ads — a format that lets you boost organic posts directly from your TikTok profile — you need to connect your TikTok account to the Ads Manager.

1. Go to User → User Settings.
2. Click Link TikTok Account.
3. Verify ownership via an email code.
4. TikTok will match your account based on your email address and complete the connection.

Once linked, you can select organic videos from your profile when creating an ad, making the promoted content appear native to the feed. For a full walkthrough of this connection process, see how to connect your TikTok account to TikTok Ads Manager.

A common point of confusion is understanding when you need the Business Center in addition to the Ads Manager. The short answer: the Ads Manager is a single-account campaign tool, while the Business Center acts as an umbrella that organises multiple ad accounts, team members, and shared assets.

When you only need the Ads Manager: You are a solo advertiser running campaigns for one brand from one account.

When you need the Business Center: You manage more than one ad account, work with a team, or operate as an agency handling multiple clients.

Access the Business Center from the hamburger icon inside the Ads Manager and select Business Center. Choose whether you are an advertiser for your own brand or an agency managing multiple businesses, then complete the registration.

Once inside, the key areas to configure are:

Accounts Overview

The accounts panel shows all linked ad accounts in one dashboard, including spend, cost-per-click, CPM, and impressions for each. To add an existing account, click Add Advertiser Account, copy the account ID from the Ads Manager dropdown, and submit an access request with your preferred permission level (admin, operator, or analyst).

Team Members

Click Add Member, enter your colleague's or client's email address, and assign a role:

• Admin — Full control over the account.
• Standard — Can manage campaigns and creatives.
• Finance Manager — Can pull invoices and manage billing without touching campaign settings.

This role-based system eliminates the need to share passwords, and every action taken by any team member is logged in the Activity Log — showing the operator, action type, affected account, and timestamp.

Shared Assets

From the Access section of the Business Center, you can share pixels, product catalogs, and audiences across linked ad accounts. This is particularly useful when an agency onboards a new client: rather than rebuilding tracking from scratch, you can request access to an existing pixel and audience list.

You can also link TikTok accounts or request influencer access. For influencer collaborations, the influencer provides a token from TikTok that grants you access to their account or to specific posts — without handing over their login credentials.

TikTok Shops can be added or accessed in the same way, making the Business Center the centralised hub for managing all commerce assets alongside paid campaigns.

Once your pixel is tracking, your payment method is active, and your account is verified, you are ready to launch. In the Ads Manager:

1. Go to Campaigns and click Create.
2. Select a campaign objective — for example, Conversions → Website.
3. Choose Manual Campaign for full control over settings.
4. At the ad group level, configure your placement, targeting, and daily or lifetime budget.
5. At the ad level, upload your video creative and link it to a destination URL.

For a complete walkthrough of building and scaling campaigns, the TikTok Ads tutorial covering scaling strategies goes through each step in detail.

The setup process is straightforward, but the order matters: install the pixel first, verify your business second, add your payment method third, and only then run your first campaign. Skipping the pixel means your early spend generates no learnable data for TikTok's algorithm, which is the most common and most costly beginner mistake.

If you are managing a single account solo, the Ads Manager alone is sufficient. If you are building a team or handling multiple brands, set up the Business Center before inviting anyone — the activity log and role-based access are worth it from day one.

To get started with ad credits that may offset early testing costs, claim the current TikTok Ads bonus and check the current offer terms before signing up.