TikTok Ads benchmarks by industry
TikTok advertising benchmarks for ecommerce brands: CPM, click-through rate, conversion rate, cost per acquisition and ROAS by category, plus social CPM across platforms.
TikTok's economics are the inverse of Meta's: impressions are cheap and conversion is hard. The ecommerce sample here puts the all-category median CPM at $4.08 against Meta's $15.06, with a 0.61% click-through rate and 1.56% conversion rate — and a median cost per acquisition of $17.07, well below Meta's $38.99.
Category spread is wide enough that the median hides the story. Apparel converts at 2.08% and returns 2.70× on spend; Food & Beverage and Health & Wellness convert around 1% and return well under 1×, which is a structural warning rather than a run of bad creative.
The second table places TikTok next to other platforms on cost of impressions alone, from a separate impression-weighted sample. It is useful for planning reach budgets and useless for predicting conversion.
TikTok Ads — direct-to-consumer ecommerce
Who is in this sample: 5,900+ DTC ecommerce brands
| Industry | CTR | CPM | CVR | CPA | ROAS |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apparel & Accessories | 0.74% | $4.16 | 2.08% | $20.64 | 2.70× |
| Beauty | 0.51% | $3.92 | 1.12% | $10.32 | 0.46× |
| Home & Garden | 0.59% | $4.61 | 1.61% | $19.33 | 2.02× |
| Food & Beverage | 0.45% | $4.54 | 0.99% | $12.44 | 0.33× |
| Toys, Art & Collectibles | 0.55% | $4.40 | 1.71% | $18.37 | 1.57× |
| Sports & Outdoors | 0.54% | $3.46 | 0.99% | $14.67 | 1.44× |
| Electronics | 0.64% | $4.40 | 1.46% | $28.90 | 1.98× |
| Health & Wellness | 0.51% | $3.67 | 0.8% | $11.17 | 0.42× |
| Lifestyle & Boutique | 0.61% | $4.01 | 2.06% | $19.59 | 2.00× |
| All industries · publisher's own figure | 0.61% | $4.08 | 1.56% | $17.07 | 1.51× |
Industry names are reproduced in the publisher's own wording.
Source
- Publisher
- Triple Whale
- Data period
- 1 Aug 2025 – 31 Jul 2026
- Sample
- Over 5,900 brands on the Triple Whale platform
- Geography
- Not stated
- Statistic
- Figures are medians
Notes on this table
- Direct-to-consumer ecommerce brands only.
- The publisher's Pets & Animals row is omitted here: it prints an average order value of $0.38 and a ROAS of 0.02, which is a broken row rather than a benchmark.
How to use these numbers
A benchmark is a description of someone else's sample, not a target. The number worth hitting is your own break-even: the cost per acquisition your margin allows, or the return on ad spend that leaves a profit after the product is paid for. Use the calculators to work that out first, then use the benchmark to ask whether the market is even priced for it.
When your number sits far from the table, check the sample before checking your account. A store compared with a lead-generation sample, or a brand-heavy account compared with broad prospecting, will look broken while being perfectly healthy. The universe line above each table is there for exactly that check.
Calculators for these metrics
Frequently asked questions
- Why is TikTok's CPA lower than Meta's but its ROAS not higher?
- Cheaper acquisitions on smaller orders. The same sample reports a $50.32 average order value on TikTok, so a low cost per purchase does not automatically produce a better return — the median ROAS is 1.51× against Meta's 1.88×.
- Is a 0.61% click-through rate bad?
- Not for the platform. In-feed video is consumed without clicking, so TikTok's click rates sit roughly a quarter of Meta's across the same brands. Judge creative against TikTok benchmarks only.
- Why is one category missing from the table?
- The publisher's Pets & Animals row prints an average order value of $0.38 and a ROAS of 0.02. That is a broken row rather than a benchmark, so it is left out and the omission is stated here rather than hidden.
How this data is handled
- Every figure is transcribed from a public report and carries its publisher, sample, data period and a link. Nothing is estimated or rounded to “about”.
- Publishers are never blended. A click-through rate from one report and a CPM from another never appear in the same row.
- Each table states who is in its sample, because advertiser mix — not disagreement — explains most of the spread between reports.
- Publisher errors and dated datasets are footnoted rather than quietly corrected or refreshed from another source.
Social CPM by platform
Who is in this sample: Tens of millions of impressions across industries, brand-heavy
Industry names are reproduced in the publisher's own wording.
Source
Notes on this table