Best TikTok Ads: 7 Real Examples to Study

The best TikTok ads behave like TikToks: Chipotle’s #GuacDance challenge, e.l.f.’s custom “Eyes. Lips. Face.” sound, and Glossier’s creator Spark Ads all won because they looked and sounded native to the feed instead of like cropped television commercials.

I run a creative studio, and TikTok briefs are where I see the most money wasted. A team spends six weeks polishing a 30-second spot, ports it to vertical, and wonders why it dies at two seconds. So when a client asks me what actually works, I pull up real campaigns with public results, not moodboards. That is this list.

Every example below is publicly findable, either on the brand’s own TikTok account or in TikTok’s own published case studies, and each carries its year. Formats and sounds age fast on this platform, so steal the mechanic, never the trend. The set covers organic brand content, Spark Ads, Branded Hashtag Challenges, a One Day Max In-Feed ad, and TikTok Shop ads.

1. Duolingo’s unhinged Duo content

Duolingo started posting on TikTok in February 2021, and by that December the account had 1.9 million followers, built almost entirely on Duo, the brand’s giant green owl, behaving badly in the office. One post of Duo twerking on a tabletop, captioned as a sneak peek of premium content, collected 1.7 million likes. Digiday’s report on the account is worth reading for the operational detail: at the time, the account’s unhinged voice was largely the work of Zaria Parvez, a 23 year old in her first job out of college and one of the people behind the account, who started most workdays with an hour or two inside trending audio before pitching anything.

The mechanic to study is speed plus a consistent character. Duo has a fixed personality, so the team can react to a trend in hours without a rebrief. The mistake I see when teams copy this: they build the mascot but keep the approval chain. A trend response that clears legal in nine days is not a trend response. If your sign-off process cannot move in a day, pick a different mechanic from this list.

Duolingo’s posts are organic, but this is exactly the material Spark Ads exist to amplify, and it is a masterclass in the opening frame. These video hook techniques cover the same principle: the first frame has to do more than show a logo.

2. Glossier’s creator Spark Ads for Glossier You

In June 2022, Glossier’s three year old fragrance Glossier You went viral after TikTok user @bitcoin_papi posted about the reactions she got while wearing it. Glossier did the smart thing: instead of shooting a fragrance commercial, it used Spark Ads to boost organic creator posts, with the creators’ authorization, adding a link-to-purchase button to its own store. One boosted post from @lyssielooloo pulled 1.2 million likes. Per Glossy’s reporting, Glossier’s marketing SVP said a bottle was being bought every 37 seconds once the fragrance began trending, and the brand passed one million bottles sold.

Spark Ads suit this play because the paid placement keeps the original post’s likes, comments, and follows, so the ad arrives with social proof already attached. TikTok’s Spark Ads overview explains the mechanic. The lesson is humility: when real people are already selling your product better than your ad concept would, put media spend behind them instead of competing with them. More on that dynamic in our guide to UGC video.

3. Chipotle’s #GuacDance hashtag challenge

For National Avocado Day in July 2019, Chipotle launched #GuacDance, a Branded Hashtag Challenge asking people to dance to Dr. Jean’s “Guacamole Song,” timed to free guacamole on online and in-app orders that day. Per Marketing Dive, the challenge drew 250,000 video submissions and 430 million video starts in six days, making it TikTok’s highest-performing branded challenge in the US at the time. The offline result is the part I quote in meetings: Chipotle served more than 800,000 sides of guacamole, its biggest guac day ever, with avocado usage up 68 percent.

The design choice that made it work: the participation step was already famous. Dr. Jean’s song had been a children’s classroom staple for years, so nobody had to learn anything to join in. Here is the original song the whole challenge was built on, from Dr. Jean’s own channel.

A challenge works when the viewer understands the participation step before the campaign slogan. If joining takes more than one obvious action, participation collapses. These techniques that trigger virality go deeper on designing participation mechanics.

4. e.l.f.’s Eyes. Lips. Face. custom sound

The e.l.f. campaign is the one every hashtag challenge since has been measured against. In late 2019, e.l.f. commissioned an original track, “Eyes. Lips. Face.,” instead of licensing an existing hit. Per e.l.f.’s own announcement, it was the first branded TikTok campaign to use original music, and the first paid ad to hold the number one trending hashtag on TikTok. By October 2019 the campaign had passed one billion views with over 400,000 user videos, and the song later got a full release with Grammy winning songwriter iLL Wayno and artist Holla FyeSixWun. This is the official music video that came out of it.

The insight was that on TikTok, sound is the brand asset. A licensed pop song promotes the pop song; a custom track with your name in the chorus promotes you every time someone reuses it. The risk is quality. A custom brand song that sounds like a jingle gets ignored, so e.l.f. hired people who actually make records. Half-committing here is worse than not trying.

5. Little Moons and the big Tesco trend

In January 2021, UK mochi brand Little Moons watched a trend it did not start: young people filming themselves hunting for its ice cream in the freezer aisle of “big Tesco.” Instead of just enjoying the moment, the brand ran a One Day Max In-Feed ad telling people exactly where to buy and how to eat the product. Per TikTok’s own case study, that single-day ad delivered 6.7 million impressions with a 4.54 percent engagement rate, and Little Moons’ sales at Tesco rose 1,300 percent in February compared with December, its biggest ever sales week across UK grocery.

What I like most is the brand’s own posts during the trend. The one above, a POV joke about being the last pack in the store, plays along with the community instead of lecturing it. The ad then answered the two practical questions the trend created: where do I get it, and what do I do with it. Trend plus availability plus usage. That is the whole funnel in one day of media.

6. Fenty Beauty’s TikTok Shop engine

Fenty Beauty’s TikTok presence today is a steady stream of swatch demos and try-ons, wired directly to purchase through TikTok Shop and Shop Ads. In a five week measurement study published as a TikTok case study, the brand found that TikTok Shop activity generated 6.7 times more sales beyond on-platform purchases, with its own online store capturing nearly twice the halo impact of all other channels combined, and over a third of incremental sales coming from new customers.

The creative pattern is consistent: product in frame immediately, application shown on a real person, result visible before any purchase prompt. The post above walks through four shades in one take. No studio, no script gymnastics, just proof. For beauty and any demo-friendly product, this is the most copyable entry on the list, because the production bar is a phone, good light, and a person who knows the product.

7. Ryanair’s self-deprecating plane

Ryanair built one of the most recognizable brand accounts on TikTok out of a face filter slapped on a 737 and a willingness to agree with its own critics. Complaints about fees and cramped seats get answered with snark rather than spin. Skift’s interview with Ryanair marketing chief Dara Brady sums the approach up as turning memes into core messaging and social snark into earned attention, keeping the brand visible without heavy spending on traditional advertising.

The honest caveat: this only works if your positioning can absorb the joke. Ryanair sells low fares, so joking about no-frills service reinforces the reason customers already chose it. A premium brand running the same playbook would torch its own price point. Before anyone on your team pitches “let’s be like Ryanair,” write down what the self-deprecation would admit, and check you can afford to admit it.

The seven ads side by side

Here is the whole list in one view, with the thing worth stealing and the way each approach goes wrong.

Example	Year	Format	The move to steal	Watch out
Duolingo’s Duo content	2021 to now	Organic brand posts	A fixed character that can react to trends in hours	Dies if approvals take days
Glossier You	2022	Spark Ads on creator posts	Put spend behind posts already selling for you	Needs creator authorization and monitoring
Chipotle #GuacDance	2019	Branded Hashtag Challenge	A participation step people already know	A tentpole day, so timing has to be exact
e.l.f. Eyes. Lips. Face.	2019	Hashtag challenge with custom sound	Own the sound, not a license to someone else’s	A weak track reads as a jingle
Little Moons	2021	One Day Max In-Feed ad	Answer where-to-buy while the trend is hot	Useless without retail stock ready
Fenty Beauty	Current	TikTok Shop and Shop Ads	Demo, result, then the purchase prompt	Thin without a real person showing proof
Ryanair	2021 to now	Organic brand posts	Agree with the joke about you first	Only safe if positioning absorbs the joke

What the research says about the first six seconds

The examples share one habit: something happens immediately. TikTok’s creator ad research with CreatorIQ found that 90 percent of ad recall impact is captured within the first six seconds. The full report from CreatorIQ puts numbers on the specific openers: a creator directly addressing the audience from the start lifted brand recall 112 percent, saying “you” within the first five seconds lifted purchase intent 128 percent, and showing the product throughout lifted brand recall 89 percent and purchase intent 47 percent. Music mattered too, lifting recall 61 percent and purchase intent 177 percent.

Treat those as directional, not as a formula. A greeting fits Duolingo’s owl; it would feel absurd in Fenty’s swatch demos. The numbers tell you the opening seconds carry the weight. The examples tell you the opening has to fit the brand.

Build for wear, too. TikTok’s creative fatigue research with System1 found that entertaining ads fatigue less, so they can run longer, and that early branding helps rather than hurts. TikTok’s creative effectiveness guidance covers both findings.

Specs to check before you export

TikTok’s creative best practices ask for the basics: sound or music, vertical 9:16 orientation, at least 720p, and key content inside the UI safe zone. The In-Feed ad specifications accept vertical, horizontal, and square video up to 10 minutes, with files up to 500 MB and a bitrate of at least 516 kbps. For Spark Ads, TikTok’s help page sets a 10 minute maximum on videos that can be sparked and caps an Ads Manager account at 10,000 Spark Ads. Formats and buying options change, so confirm current pages before production. If you are still choosing between placements, this overview of video advertising formats and our comparison of YouTube Shorts vs TikTok give the wider context.

Pick one beat and build around it

None of these seven look alike. Duolingo is chaotic, Glossier is borrowed trust, Chipotle is a dance, Fenty is a demo. What they share is a single clear beat the viewer gets almost immediately, executed in the platform’s native grammar. So before your next brief goes to production: write the opening frame, name the sound, decide what proof appears before the call to action, and check the whole thing still works on mute.

A dedicated creative team such as Moonb can produce this kind of platform-native video on a steady weekly rhythm alongside your own marketing team. And if you want to compare approaches to creator-style creative first, this reference on UGC-style ad production is a useful starting point. Then come back to the test every example here passes: can a viewer understand the brand’s one useful action before their thumb moves?