Set Up Audience Signals on TikTok

​

Overview

Innkeepr creates custom audiences in TikTok Ads Manager using email-based matching, enabling you to leverage predictive audiences for improved campaign performance. Audience signals help you reach highly incremental prospects, re-engage warm leads, and protect ad spend by excluding converted users - all powered by incremental prediction models.

​

Prerequisites

Technical Requirements:

• Innkeepr integration connected to your TikTok Ads account
• Email addresses sent to Innkeepr for identity resolution

Timeline:

• Audience creation: Immediate after setup
• First audience population: 24-48 hours after creation
• Daily audience updates: Automatic refresh every 24 hours

Important: TikTok audiences are populated through email matching. Your data integration must include email addresses for users to enable audience creation and matching.

​

Use Cases

Innkeepr supports three primary use cases for TikTok audience signals:

​

Seed Audiences - Acquisition/Lookalikes

Seed audiences are used exclusively to create Lookalike Audiences in TikTok. Seeds consist of users who are most likely to respond incrementally to your advertising. TikTok uses this high-quality seed to find similar prospects, improving the efficiency of your acquisition campaigns. Best for: Cold acquisition campaigns targeting new customers similar to your best converters.

​

Retargeting Audiences - Re-engagement

Retargeting audiences are based on incremental prediction, similar to seed audiences, but are used directly for targeting—not as lookalikes. They consist of users who interacted with your brand but haven’t converted yet, and who are predicted to respond incrementally to retargeting efforts. Best for: Re-engaging warm prospects with high conversion potential who need an additional touchpoint.

​

Exclusion Audiences - Spend Protection

Exclusion lists are audiences that should be excluded from your ad campaigns—typically recent converters, existing customers, or users who shouldn’t receive certain campaigns. These lists must be used exclusively as exclusions in TikTok Ads Manager to reduce wasted spend and ad fatigue. Best for: Preventing ad spend on users who have already converted or are unlikely to respond incrementally. Important: Avoid using exclusion lists for direct targeting or as lookalike sources. Requirements: Value-based audiences require email addresses sent to the Innkeepr platform. See Spec: Identify for how to enrich profiles with email identifiers.

​

Setup Instructions

​

Standard Audience Signals (Seed, Retargeting, Exclusion)

​

Best Practices

​

Testing Recommendations

Seed Audiences:

• Test lookalike audiences at different percentage ranges (1%, 3%, 5%) to find optimal reach vs. quality balance
• Allow 7-14 days for TikTok’s algorithm to optimize delivery before evaluating performance
• Monitor CPM and frequency to avoid audience saturation

Retargeting Audiences:

• Set frequency caps to prevent ad fatigue (recommended: 3-4 impressions per week)

• Compare performance against traditional retargeting audiences (video viewers, profile visitors)

Exclusion Audiences: Test Innkeepr exclusions incrementally against your existing setup using a controlled experiment:

• Control campaign: Broad targeting + existing exclusion lists
• Test campaign: Broad targeting + existing exclusion lists + Innkeepr exclusion audience

​

Common Pitfalls

• Missing email data: Without email addresses in your Innkeepr integration, audiences cannot be created for TikTok
• Using exclusion lists for targeting: Exclusion audiences are optimized to identify non-incremental users and should never be used for direct targeting
• Evaluating too quickly: Allow sufficient time for audience population (24-48h) and campaign learning (7-14 days)
• Low match rates: Ensure email addresses are properly formatted and current to maximize matching with TikTok users
• Mixing audience types: Keep seed, retargeting, and exclusion audiences in separate campaigns for clearer performance measurement

​

Troubleshooting

Audience Not Populating Issue: No users in audience after 48 hours Solutions:

• Verify email addresses are properly formatted and sent to Innkeepr
• Check that your Innkeepr audience has sufficient users (minimum 100 recommended)
• Confirm TikTok Ads is selected as the Source when creating the audience
• Review audience configuration in Innkeepr for correct setup

Low Match Rates Issue: Audience size in TikTok is significantly smaller than in Innkeepr Solutions:

• Ensure email addresses are properly formatted (lowercase, no spaces)
• Verify email addresses are current and actively used by your customers
• Check that users in your audience are likely TikTok users (platform demographics)
• Allow 24-48 hours for full audience matching to complete
• Review TikTok’s data quality guidelines for identifier formatting

Audience Not Appearing in TikTok Ads Manager Issue: Innkeepr audience not visible in TikTok Ads Manager Solutions:

• Confirm TikTok Ads account is correctly connected in Innkeepr
• Verify your TikTok Business Center has proper permissions for the connected ad account
• Check that the audience has finished processing (24-48 hours after creation)
• Contact Innkeepr support if the issue persists after 48 hours

Audience Size Too Small Issue: Matched audience is below TikTok’s minimum threshold for targeting Solutions:

• Expand your Innkeepr audience criteria to include more users
• Verify email data quality and formatting
• Consider that TikTok requires minimum audience sizes (typically 1,000 users for targeting)
• For lookalike audiences, TikTok recommends seed sizes of at least 1,000-5,000 matched users