TikTok advertising is becoming increasingly popular for E-commerce businesses due to its large user base, cost-effectiveness, and sales-driving effectiveness. In response to this trend, TikTok offers advanced solutions to help businesses enhance and optimize their advertising strategies. Particularly noteworthy in this cookie-less era is TikTok’s server-side tracking solution, specifically the TikTok Events API.
In this blog, we will guide you with everything you need to know about TikTok Events API: From what is it, its benefits, and how you can utilize it for your Shopify store. Get ready, and let’s dive in!
Table of Contents
What is TikTok Events API?
TikTok Events API is a server-to-server connection enabling you to directly share your website data with TikTok. Some of the events that it can track are content views, checkout, add-to-cart actions, etc. Setting up TikTok Events API is one of the requirements to use the Web Conversion objective in TikTok Ads Manager, along with using Pixel.
It is great for monitoring your website’s conversion data to enhance TikTok ads, just like TikTok Pixel. But there’s a key difference in how they track the events. Pixel can only track when users load your page on the browser. In contrast, Events API records each event through your server.
For example, with TikTok Pixel, you have to add a snippet code to an action on your website to track data for that action. But there’s a catch—it only works when users activate that action. On the flip side, TikTok Events API is hassle-free. No need to set up anything for actions. Just manually record events through your server, and the data smoothly merges with your server’s existing data.
Benefits of TikTok Events API
TikTok Events API, as a server-to-server connection, requires more technical expertise from your team than using pixel. It may also use more server capacity. Despite these challenges, it remains a fantastic choice for collecting and analyzing data to fuel a data-driven marketing campaign. Here are the key benefits:
- Boost ad delivery and targeting by capturing missing conversions: Pixel is excellent for capturing conversion data, but since it relies on browser-side tracking, the data can be affected by browser inconsistencies and connectivity issues. This means you might miss out on data when these factors act up. Events API, on the other hand, sidesteps these problems by connecting directly to your server data, providing more accurate numbers for ad measurement, optimization, and targeting.
- Improve data security: With Events API, you have control over which customer information is tracked through your CRM. Hence, it’s a safer and more secure way to share customer data with TikTok.
- Streamline data: Events API allows you to share data directly from your CRM, ensuring a seamless data flow for measurement. This guarantees that your analysis becomes more comprehensive and provides much more accurate insights.
How to use TikTok Events API?
Now that you’re aware of all the benefits Events API offers for TikTok advertising, let’s dive into the practical steps. In the next part, I’ll provide you with all the information you need to integrate TikTok Events with your website and manage the flow of your conversion event data.
3 ways to implement TikTok Events API
Currently, TikTok allows you to integrate Events API with your server in three ways:
- Commerce Partner Integration: If your website is built through a Commerce Partner like Shopify or WooCommerce, you can set up Events API through TikTok’s Events Manager.
- Data Partner Integration: If you use one of TikTok’s Data partners, like Customer Data Platforms (CDPs), Tag Managers, CRMs, or other marketing technology partners, setting up Events API is done through the partner platform.
- Direct Integration: For more control over your data management, you can set up Events API by dedicating in-house technical resources to follow TikTok Marketing API documentation.
To optimize your ads, TikTok defaults to using both TikTok Events API and TikTok Pixel during setup. This allows you to benefit from the advantages of both integrations. Additionally, since 2022, TikTok has supported deduplication, enabling you to combine web and server tracking for TikTok. Just make sure to add event_id to web and server tags.
Steps to integrate it into your Shopify store
As mentioned earlier, the steps for integrating Events API vary based on the platform you’re using. However, for an e-commerce business, we suggest integrating it through TikTok’s Commerce partner, as it’s more convenient and saves resources. In this blog, we’ll guide you through the step-by-step process, focusing specifically on the Shopify platform.
Step 1: First, log in to your Shopify store admin. Then, in the management dashboard, select Apps.
Step 2: Next, use the search box to find the TikTok app and install it in your store.
Step 3: Next, click on Add sales channel to integrate the app into your store.
Step 4: Choose Set up Now and finish downloading the app. Now, you can start connecting the Conversion data from your store to TikTok for reporting and advertising.
Step 5: After finishing step 4, TikTok will ask you to connect your store to TikTok for Business and TikTok Ads Manager account. This is really crucial, as these two accounts will help you on your advertising journey and report the performance of your ads. Click on Connect.
Step 6: Finally, you’ll decide how to share your Conversion events data with TikTok. By default, TikTok suggests using the Maximum mode. This option lets you combine all data-sharing features to optimize ad performance and reach the most customers. With Maximum mode, you’re merging TikTok pixel, Events API, advanced matching, Shopify API, and staying updated on the latest TikTok technology to share customer information.
Click confirm, and there you go! You’ve successfully set up TikTok Events API for your store. Now you can begin reporting and monitoring your advertising efforts.
Optimize your advertising effort today!
In general, TikTok Events API is a great tool for gathering conversion events data and managing your TikTok ads. However, for a comprehensive view of improving your marketing strategy, we recommend expanding your view to other platforms such as Google and Facebook. In such cases, you’ll benefit from a more comprehensive tool beyond TikTok Ads Manager or TikTok for Business.
Enter NestAds – our multichannel ads tracking and marketing attribution tool designed to help you monitor advertising and customer behavior across multiple channels, all managed within one platform. With NestAds, you not only get TikTok support but also gain server-side tracking and a multichannel overview! We’re confident that with NestAds, your advertising and marketing efforts will reach new heights!
