Furthering our advertising transparency efforts: introducing "About this ad"

09 August, 2022
Introducing 'About this ad' a new feature that enables users to tap any ad in their feed to see why they're being shown this particular ad.
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At TikTok, we've seen advertising and marketing reimagined when brands come together with our community of over 1 billion to entertain and inspire each other. Advertising has become part of the TikTok experience as brands continue to express their authentic selves and build meaningful connections with the community. While we serve ads to keep our platform free and help you discover things you love, we're committed to being transparent about how we collect, use, and share data for advertising.


Digital advertising can be mysterious and opaque, but we don't think it has to be, and we strive to communicate our ad practices simply and directly. Today we're introducing new tools that give you more insights about the ads you see. We're also sharing updates on new resources for users to learn about their privacy choices and how ads are personalised for you.


Understand more about the ads that you see

We want advertising to enhance your TikTok experience. To achieve that, we may show you personalised ads, which are ads we think you will be interested in. Starting today, you will have more insights into your personalised ad experience.


We're introducing a new 'About this ad' feature, so you'll be able to tap on any ad in your feed and see why we're showing this particular ad to you. This is another step we're taking to bring more transparency into our advertising practices and help users understand how ads work on TikTok.


About this ad' can be found in the 'share' menu in the lower right corner of an ad, or with a long press on the ad. You'll be able to see factors that are used to deliver this ad to you. For example, you may see a car rental service ad because the age associated with your account is 25+, matched with the advertiser's targeting requirements for this ad. You may see a pet food ad based on TikTok's estimate of your interest in cats.


From the 'About this ad' page, you will also be able to access your ad personalisation settings and make changes to your preferences in just a few taps. You can also go to "Ads and Your Data", our latest resource page for users to understand how we use your data for advertising.


'About this ad' is now available in EU, and will become available to global users in the coming weeks. We'll continue to add more features for 'About this ad', giving you more transparency and context about your ad experience on TikTok.


Where we go from here

'About this ad' is just the latest step in our ongoing journey to enhance advertising transparency and create a trusted space for entertainment and creative self-expression. We know saying "trust us" is not enough, so that's why we will work continuously to build privacy and transparency into our products, policies and processes. We're taking a number of steps towards our commitment to a privacy-first approach for our community with increased transparency:


  • Introduce new ways to help users understand why they see certain ads and how they can make meaningful choices about their personalised ad experience.

  • Provide resources that empower both users and advertisers to stay in control and build positive connections.

  • Expand our product solutions into new markets.

  • Continue teaming up with industry partners and associations to explore more innovative solutions for advertising transparency.


There is no finish line when it comes to fulfilling our commitment to privacy and transparency. We continue to safeguard our users' information and provide our community with a range of privacy, safety and security controls as they choose the TikTok experience that's right for them. We look forward to sharing more about our ongoing work in the next few weeks.


Update on Aug 9, 2022 at 3pm, CET


'About this ad' is now available globally. We strive to create an enriching ad experience for both users and brands and we will continue to add more features to 'About this ad' in the coming months, for example: disclosing the advertiser behind a certain ad and giving users more options to control their ad experience.


As we continue learning from the TikTok community about ways to build a better advertising experience, we're working on new solutions that enable to the community to see ads that are relevant to their interests. As part of these efforts, we've also made more control features available in Ads Personalization settings.


Users can manage whether their ads are based on estimates of their interests or gender. For example, users can choose to turn off the interest category "Beauty" so they will receive fewer ads that target to match this interest. Users can change their gender setting or input any gender of their choosing. These updates can be changed at any time in the app and apply only to users' ad settings, which does not affect other TikTok services.