While more and more TikTok users are speaking out about this push by the app to integrate in-stream shopping, and how it is disrupting the user experience, the platform remains fixated on building out its in-app commerce elements, with new additions that will help more brands promote direct sales within the video feed.

Today, TikTok announced some new updates to its Video Shopping Ads, as well as launching a new ad placement in the Shop tab to showcase your products.

First off, on Video Shopping Ads. TikTok says its Video Shopping promotions are now available globally, while it's also added some new elements to make them a more appealing, more simplified consideration.

To further support even more merchants in setting up Shopping Ads, TikTok will introduce the ability to automatically seed their product catalog into ad formats like Carousel and Product Tiles.
TikTok Carousel ads feature the "Shop Now" CTA that enables direct purchases. This new option lets retailers easily convert existing creatives into TikTok Promotions, while Product Tiles appears as a pop-over overlaid onto the video play.

And both have been working so far.

According to TikTok:

"With Carousel, you can drive a 2x increase in CTR and 292% CTA ROAS lift for retargeting. With Product Tiles, we've seen a 14% CTR Increase and 3.2% ROAS Lift compared to Product Cards alone."

On the other hand, TikTok claims that it has widened its collaboration with Shopify so that it is easier for Shopify merchants to create Video Shopping Ads.

This integration allows new merchants to easily connect their catalog and data connections directly into TikTok. And now, merchants can create the first Video Shopping Ads campaign using pre-populated campaign settings and best practices-all from within Shopify.".

The new Shop Ads Product Card format, for example, lets merchants promote their products right from the Shop Tab "with just an image and details from their product catalog."

"Placements in the Shop Tab reach customers who are already in the mindset to discover products and shop, helping maximize sales."

Therefore, in essence, the intention of these new features is to enable merchants to craft shopping-related deals much easier, not recording special TikTok videos and ads like you used to.
As you'd expect, part of TikTok's further eCommerce efforts as ByteDance looks to copy Douyin – TikTok for China – successes into international markets as well.

Most of the money Douyin makes is from in-app purchases, and its earnings far exceed the cash racked up by its sister TikTok, nearly 100 to 1.

In 2023, Douyin directly pushed over $270 billion in product sales, growing 60% compared with 2022. TikTok earned $3.8 billion through in-app spending, which is also up 15% year-over-year but nowhere near its Chinese sister app.

You can see, therefore, why TikTok keeps pushing its in-app commerce elements, in the hopes that, eventually, they will gain traction and become a bigger element with Western consumers as well.

This hasn't been a huge success yet. But with hundreds of billions at play, TikTok's clearly not going to give up without a real fight.

The danger is that its constant commerce promos will become too annoying for the users of TikTok and negatively affect its usage. Still, I think it'll take a pretty serious decline for that to be the case.