All You Need to Know About Tiktok Dynamic Showcase Ads (DSA)

If you are familiar with Dynamic Product Ads on Facebook, you will understand the core of what TikTok Dynamic Showcase Ads are right away. 

However, there are some key differences. The most important difference being the creative format and creative best practices. 

TikTok is a video-only platform, meaning you need videos for every single SKU in your catalog. The videos need to grab people’s attention instantly and drive direct response.

Shakr is the preferred creative partner for brands looking to get the most out of their Dynamic Showcase Ads.

In this article, we cover the basics of what DSA is, how to get started, and how to optimize performance with Shakr custom templates.

What is TikTok DSA


Dynamic Showcase Ads (DSA) automatically promote the most relevant product offer based on people’s shopping behavior on and off your website. This solution removes the burden of creating individual ads for each of the hundred, thousands, or millions of products you sell.

If you have a product catalog and wish to sell more products, you better get started with Dynamic Showcase Ads on TikTok.

How to get started with TikTok DSA

There are five main steps required to create Dynamic Showcase Ads.

  1. Create a catalog on TikTok Business Center.
  2. Upload products to your catalog.
  3. Generate videos for the products in your catalog.
  4. Integrate events between your catalog and measurement partner or TikTok Pixel.
  5. ​Publish a campaign using the products in your catalog.

You can find an article on these basic steps in the TikTok Business Help Center

Optimize performance with Shakr Custom Templates

As you might already know, creative quality is the most important factor determining the success of an ad campaign. This is also true for Dynamic Ads, but it quickly becomes extremely challenging when we are talking about automating creative production for catalogs of hundreds, thousands, or millions of products.

If you follow the five basic steps required to create Dynamic Showcase Ads as mentioned above, you have the bare minimum to get started. However, you will be limited to a set of generic templates for generating product videos.

In order to go beyond the basics and optimize performance, you should consider looking into custom video templates. Which will increase the quality of your DSA creatives.

There are six main steps required to create Dynamic Showcase Ads with Shakr Custom templates.

  1. Create a custom template.
  2. Generate videos for your entire product catalog with the Shakr platform.
  3. Create a catalog on TikTok Business Center.
  4. Upload products with videos to your catalog.
  5. Integrate events between your catalog and measurement partner or TikTok Pixel.
  6. Publish a campaign using the products in your catalog.

Step 1. Create a Custom Template 

When automating creative production at scale, the creative foundation has to be excellent.

This is why the Shakr platform has been developed to empower creative teams to use the tools they know and love, rather than constrain them with proprietary solutions. 

Shakr enables creative teams to turn any Adobe After Effects project into programmable custom templates, without having to make any compromises on creative quality and brand guidelines.

The Custom Template can be designed by your internal creative team, your creative agency, or the Shakr Creative Lab. Once the Custom design is ready, it is turned into a programmable template on the Shakr platform.

If you are curious about Shakr custom templates, feel free to reach out to learn more

Step 2. Generate videos for the entire product catalog with the Shakr platform.

Time for Creative Automation magic.

Input: Product feed > Shakr Creative Automation Engine > Output: Product feed including videos for each individual SKU.

It is pretty much that simple. But it has taken years to develop the technology behind it.

Step 3. Create a catalog in the TikTok Business Center.

In order to create a new catalog. Follow these steps.

3.1 Open your Business Center and select “Catalogs”.

3.2 Click “Add Catalog”

3.3 Add your preferred settings. Note that currency and target country cannot be edited after you’ve created your catalog.

That’s it, your catalog has been created. However, you need to add products and connect the catalog to a measurement partner or TikTok Pixel, which is step 4 and 5.

Step 4. Upload products with videos to your catalog.

In step 2. The Shakr Creative Automation Engine was used to output a product feed URL for your entire product catalog. This feed includes all the information needed for uploading products to your TikTok catalog, including product videos.

In order to add products to your catalog. Go to the product catalog you created in step 3, and follow these steps:

4.1 Select “Add Products” and choose “Data Feed Schedule”

4.2 Add the product feed URL and select the below-outlined settings.

Now your products will upload and process. This might take a while, so be patient.

Step 5. Integrate events between your catalog and measurement partner or TikTok Pixel.

Connecting your app measurement partner or your TikTok Pixel to your Catalog will allow you to dynamically show ads to people based on how they interacted with your app or website.

5.1 ​On the menu on the left side of the screen, under Configure, click Event Sources.

5.2  Choose whether you want to connect your Catalog to: 

  • App Event Sources: Track your in-app events with our measurement partners and connect them with your catalog. 
  • Pixel Event Sources: Connect your catalog with the events that happen on your website.

Step 6. Publish a campaign using the products in your catalog.

Once you have created your catalog, uploaded your products, and connected your event sources you’re ready to create a campaign. 

In order to create Dynamic Showcase Ads, follow these steps:

6. 1. To get started go to the Campaign tab and click Create.

6.2 Select the catalog sales objective

6.2 Ad group level settings

6.2.1 Under Products, select your Catalog and choose a Product Set.

6.2.2 Select if your products are for sale on on a App or Website

6.2.3 Under Targeting, choose your Audience

You can leverage the catalog sales objective both for retargeting and for finding prospective audiences. And you layer on demographics and interests.

6.2.5 Set budget and schedule

6.2.5 Set bid strategy and optimization goal

6.3 Ad level settings


Leave the “Specify a video design for ad delivery” checkbox unchecked, the videos will be pulled directly from the Product Video URL parameter in your catalog.

Specify the reaming details of the ad, and click submit.

Final words

We believe TikTok Dynamic Showcase Ads is a gift for performance marketers with large product catalogs. For years, these marketers have been depending on Facebook and Google for scalable ways of meeting their performance goals. With TikTok on the rise, this is changing.

So be proactive and get started with Dynamic Showcase Ads today.

If you are interested in learning more about running TikTok Dynamic Showcase Ads with Shakr, please feel free to reach out.

Head of Marketing at Shakr. From Norway, ended up in South-Korea after a lifelong detour through Qatar, South-Africa, China and Poland.

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