TikTok has rolled out significant updates to its AI-powered Smart+ advertising suite, giving brands more control over automation, creative assets, and performance tracking. The platform unveiled these enhancements during Advertising Week New York 2025, emphasizing how improved flexibility and data transparency can help advertisers optimize holiday campaigns for stronger business outcomes (Source).
What the new automation tools do
The refreshed Smart+ experience introduces a unified campaign workflow that adapts to each advertiser’s preferred level of automation — from fully automated to hands-on control. Marketers can now tailor settings across campaign modules, including targeting, budgeting, and creative inputs. This modular design simplifies campaign setup while preserving precision.
Among the most notable updates:
- Unified Smart+ Buying Experience: A single streamlined interface supports full, partial, or manual automation for better scalability.
- Enhanced Control: Advertisers can customize campaign parameters and test configurations through split test tools to identify top-performing combinations.
- Symphony Creative Integration: TikTok’s Symphony automation tools are now embedded directly into Smart+, allowing faster creation and optimization of TikTok-native ad formats.
- AI-Driven Enhancements: The platform automatically adjusts creative elements like aspect ratio, music, dubbing, translation, and visual quality to ensure ads meet performance standards.
To complement these creative tools, TikTok has upgraded GMV Max reporting within the Creative Hub, which now offers detailed visibility into which assets and creators drive conversions. This gives advertisers a granular look at performance by campaign, product, and influencer — improving both sales attribution and budget allocation.
Measurement is another major focus. TikTok has expanded its Attribution Portfolio to integrate with third-party analytics platforms such as Google Analytics, allowing advertisers to measure assisted conversions and cross-channel influence more accurately. Early tests show a 54% average lift in conversions and a 27% drop in cost per action for campaigns using these integrations.
Additionally, TikTok now tracks assisted conversions, capturing the impact of users who view a TikTok ad but complete a purchase through another platform — accounting for over 25% of previously untracked conversions.
With 70% of TikTok users discovering new brands and 61% making purchases after seeing content, these updates reinforce the platform’s influence across every stage of the shopping journey. By merging automation, creativity, and precise measurement, TikTok is positioning Smart+ as a powerful solution for marketers aiming to drive discovery, consideration, and purchase throughout the holidays and beyond.
