If you run TikTok ads, you would already know that assigning credit for a particular conversion to the actual users behind it can often be challenging. This is because basic conversion tracking falls short in this regard – it doesn’t provide the means to connect event data to the real users. This further leads to a gap in attribution. And further, the same gap makes it difficult for you to accurately track the effectiveness of your campaigns and optimize your ads with confidence.
This is where features like TikTok Advanced Matching can prove to be helpful. They have been designed specifically to help bridge the attribution gap and link event data to actual users. Using such features, you can get much more accurate insights into your campaign performance and ensure that your reporting is more reliable and ad targeting is much sharper.
But how exactly does Advanced Matching in TikTok help? Does it offer any other benefits apart from improving attribution? And how to set it up?
To answer all such questions, we have come up with this blog. Through it, we will discuss what Advanced matching is, its benefits, types, configuration process, and other key aspects in detail.
So, without delaying any further, let’s straightaway dive into the specifics.
Table of Contents
What is Advanced Matching in TikTok?
Advanced Matching in TikTok is a feature that enables you to securely send hashed customer information (such as email addresses and contact numbers) to TikTok, along with the event data collected from users across your website.
By passing this additional information, Advanced Matching improves TikTok’s ability to connect website visitor actions to actual user accounts. As a result, TikTok’s ad system can more accurately attribute conversions and optimize campaigns for stronger performance.
Let’s better understand how advanced matching works in practice with an example.
Suppose you have the TikTok pixel set up on your e-commerce website. Without Advanced matching enabled, the pixel will only record the event data and share it with TikTok. However, if you enable Advanced Matching, the pixel will also collect personally identifiable information from users, such as their email addresses and phone numbers. After collecting, it will hash the information using the SHA-256 algorithm and share it with TikTok, along with the event data.
TikTok will use that additional customer information to match events to real user accounts. Based on those findings, it will identify which types of accounts are actually yielding meaningful results for your business. Further, during audience building and ad optimization, it will utilize that information to ensure your ads reach users who resemble those high-value profiles.
So, overall, you will get the best campaign performance results without spending more ad budget or using extra resources.
Types of Advanced Matching in TikTok
TikTok offers two different types of advanced matching: manual and automatic.
While both help to send customer information ahead securely, they work in slightly different ways.
Manual Advanced Matching
Manual advanced matching allows you to control what customer information parameters are shared with TikTok and which website events trigger that sharing.
To implement it, you can either:
- Add the advanced matching code to each event on your website.
- Enable advanced matching by configuring the data sharing settings of a particular partner integration.
Best Suited For:
Those merchants and advertisers who:
- Want custom event tracking
- Granular control over how event data and customer information are shared with TikTok
- Are proficient with coding and technical expertise in implementing
Automatic Advanced Matching
In automatic advanced matching, the TikTok pixel automatically collects customer information, such as email, phone number, etc., from your site. It collects these key data points from form fields, displayed text, or website variables like window.datalayer. Once collected, it then hashes the information in your browser using the SHA-256 algorithm and sends it to TikTok.
Unlike manual advanced matching, the automatic approach doesn’t require any coding knowledge or technical expertise. You can enable it easily in your TikTok Ads Manager account for any pixel.
Best suited for:
Merchants and advertisers who:
- Want a simple and low-effort process to enable advanced matching.
- Don’t have coding expertise or developer resources available to them.
How to Set up Advanced Matching in TikTok?
Now we will be learning how to set up both manual and automatic advanced matching.
| Note: Even if you set up just one of these methods, you can still improve attribution and the performance of your TikTok ad campaigns. However, TikTok recommends setting up both manual and automatic advanced matching together. Learn more about it here. |
Manual Advanced Matching
Before you begin, there are some prerequisites to be met. Those include:
- Technical resources for implementing manual advanced matching should be in place.
- You should have the required access to your website code.
- You should have events set up in your website code.
- The ability to add privacy-safe audience data to parameters
With these prerequisites covered, you can proceed further with this process:
- Go to the Event Code: You need to first locate the event code on your website for which you want to implement advanced matching. It should look similar to the sample shared in the image below:
- Place the Advanced Matching Code: While using ttq.identity as the start of the advanced matching code, place it before the event code (before ttq.track)
- Pass Email and Phone Numbers: Then you will have to pass email and phone numbers under the ttq.identity function. There are two ways to do it:
- Pass the raw values and allow TikTok to hash them on the client side.
| Note: In case you pass original, non-hashed values, you must be aware of these requirements: 1. You should normalize your phone numbers to the E164 format, which includes a combination of +{country code}{phone number}. 2. For E164 parsing, use this available resource on GitHub. |
- Pass hashed values
| Note: For passing hashed values, here are some requirements you must meet: 1. Emails – You should reduce all letters to lowercase before hashing – You should trim all the leading spaces before hashing – There shouldn’t be any other type of normalizing before hashing – Only SHA-256 (a secure hash algorithm) is accepted. Use this resource on GitHub for the same. 2. Phone numbers – Normalize your phone numbers to the E164 format. – Use the same resource shared above for E164 parsing. – Know that only SHA-256 is supported. 3. External IDs – You must remove all the leading or trailing spaces. |
- Place the Advanced Matching Code: You need to then place the advanced matching code above the event code. This will ensure that whenever an event fires, it can also capture the advanced matching data.
For your reference, here’s an example of how the code should look in practice:
- Follow steps 1-4 for all the pages of your website that have event code.
- Verify the setup: Once you add the advanced matching code, you must verify if it is working properly using the TikTok Pixel Helper. Here’s how:
- Install the Pixel Helper extension.
- Go to your website and trigger events just like any shopper or visitor would.
- Check the details of those events in the Pixel Helper.
- Look for a green checkmark showing that all events are firing properly.
- Under parameter details, confirm whether both email and phone numbers appear.
- If they are, then the code implementation was successful.
Automatic Advanced Matching
Before you begin, ensure that you have a TikTok pixel installed on your website.
After that:
- Go to your TikTok Ads Manager account.
- Go to ‘Tools’ and then ‘Data Sources.’
- Select any preferred TikTok pixel installed across your site.
- Click on its ‘Settings.’
- Scroll down to ‘Privacy and Safety.’
- Enable ‘Automatic Advanced Matching’ and select the customer information parameters you would want to share with TikTok.
And the process would be complete.
| Note: The two processes shared above for setting up Advanced Matching are native to TikTok’s ecosystem. However, these aren’t the only methods; you can also implement Advanced Matching through third-party tools and apps, many of which offer added features like Events API support, etc. |
With AdNabu’s TikTok Pixel app, create unlimited pixels for your Shopify store and enable Advanced Matching for all of them in just a few clicks! No coding required.
Start maximizing your TikTok ad performance today.
Benefits of Advanced Matching in TikTok
Advanced Matching in TikTok offers several benefits, which include:
Better Conversion Tracking
Advanced matching in TikTok is helpful in matching ad interactions and website actions with event data on your e-commerce website, app, etc. This allows you to measure the RoAS and performance of your campaigns more effectively.
Lower Cost per Acquisition (CPA)
With Advanced matching data, TikTok’s algorithms can easily identify and deliver your ads to those users who are more likely to convert. This ensures that your ad budget is used efficiently, while also lowering your overall cost per acquisition.
Cross-Device and Multi-Session Attribution
Many people browse and shop across multiple devices. For example, someone might see your TikTok ad while scrolling on their phone, then later switch to their laptop to complete the purchase. Normally, tracking systems see those as two separate users, so the ad never gets credit.
With advanced matching, TikTok can recognize it’s the same person using their hashed email or phone. It then attributes the purchase back to your ad, giving you a complete picture of how ads influence behavior across sessions and devices.
Privacy Protection
As customer information is only shared with TikTok after proper hashing, sensitive information always remains non-identifiable. This helps to ensure that user privacy is respected and data is handled in a safe and compliant manner.
Best Practices for TikTok Advanced Matching
Now we will be going through some best practices to follow when implementing Advanced Matching.
Use Both Manual and Automatic Advanced Matching
TikTok recommends implementing both manual and automatic advanced matching methods together to get the best results.
Automatic advanced matching is easy to set up and enables you to collect the most common and crucial customer information parameters. Manual advanced matching, on the other hand, allows you to supplement this data by sending additional customer information parameters that the automatic advanced matching may miss.
By combining the data from both, you can ensure that your final customer database is much more complete and comprehensive. This helps you improve attribution, build better custom, retargeting, and lookalike audiences, and optimize your ads for maximum performance.
Install the TikTok Pixel On All Key Pages (For Automatic Advanced Matching)
Remember, Automatic Advanced Matching will only work on those web pages where:
- You have a TikTok pixel implemented
- You are collecting first-party data
Thus, always ensure that you install a TikTok pixel on important pages such as ‘Login’, ‘Checkout’, ‘Registration’, etc. This is to ensure that whenever customers add their information on these pages, the TikTok pixel can automatically collect it.
| Important: Before installing the TikTok pixel, review what type of customer details you are collecting on a page. Those details should be in compliance with TikTok’s policies. They cannot include any sensitive data such as license numbers, SSNs, etc. |
Send Comprehensive Customer Information Data With Every Event (For Manual Advanced Matching)
You should always send all supported customer information parameters for every event (email, phone, name, zip, etc.) in case of Manual advanced matching. It helps to improve match rates and also provides TikTok with richer signals to optimize your campaigns and boost their performance.
TikTok itself recommends pairing cookies with both manual and automatic advanced matching. Cookies are nothing but small data pieces on your website that improve user action tracking across different visits. By combining them with advanced matching, you allow TikTok to recognize returning users more accurately. This again helps improve attribution by linking actions across devices and sessions and getting better insights for campaign optimization.
Conclusion and Key Takeaways
TikTok Advanced Matching is a great feature that all merchants and businesses should use. It helps to close attribution gaps, improve reporting, and optimize ad delivery more effectively.
The key takeaways of this blog include:
- Basic conversion tracking often fails to connect event data with real users. Advanced matching bridges this gap.
- Advanced matching securely sends hashed customer details with event data to TikTok. It helps TikTok match actions to real accounts.
- There are two ways to implement it: Manual Advanced Matching, which gives greater control but requires technical setup or configuration through partner integrations, and Automatic Advanced Matching, which is quick to enable directly in Ads Manager.
- Manual setup involves passing identifiers such as email, phone, or other data along with events, while automatic setup relies on the Pixel to capture information from your site.
- The primary benefits of advanced matching include enhanced conversion tracking and more accurate campaign performance insights. Moreover, it can also be helpful to improve ad delivery and lower cost per result.
- Some best practices to follow when implementing advanced matching include using both manual and automated methods together. Apart from that, ensure that you also pair advanced matching with cookies to improve the attribution accuracy and strengthen campaign performance.
Good luck.
FAQs
- What is advanced matching on TikTok?
Advanced Matching on TikTok is a feature that sends hashed customer details, like email or phone, along with your website event data. This helps TikTok connect actions on your site to real user accounts more accurately.
- Should I turn on automatic advanced matching?
Yes, it is recommended to turn it on. Automatic advanced matching allows the TikTok Pixel to automatically collect identifiers like email or phone from form fields on your site and hash them before sending to TikTok. This improves conversion tracking and ad delivery without needing coding. If you want even more control, you can also use manual advanced matching or combine both.
- Are there apps that can help enable advanced matching?
Yes, there are apps that make enabling advanced matching much easier. The exact app depends on the platform you use.
For example, Shopify merchants can use Nabu for TikTok Conversion Pixel, which allows them to enable advanced matching for all TikTok pixels within Shopify itself. This way, you don’t need to add custom code to any event on your site or even visit your Ads Manager account.
4. Which identifiers should I send, and do I always send all?
For Automatic Advanced Matching, please send the five supported identifiers: email, phone number, name, address, and external ID. For Manual Advanced Matching, we recommend adding extra fields (e.g., city, state, zip, user ID). This makes the data more complete, boosts match rates, and strengthens campaign performance.
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