TikTok Integration

Manually building an ad for every SKU does not scale once a catalog has more than a handful of products. Connecting your feed to Catalog Manager lets TikTok generate and personalize ads automatically from your live product data:

1. Dynamic Showcase Ads combine your catalog with the TikTok Pixel to retarget shoppers with the exact products they viewed, added to cart, or abandoned at checkout.
2. Smart+ Catalog Ads and standard Catalog Ads let you promote a wide product range at once, with TikTok selecting and ranking which products to show each viewer.
3. Video Shopping Ads and Catalog Listing Ads' Recommended Products surface catalog items to users actively browsing and shopping on TikTok, extending reach beyond your existing audience.
4. Because everything reads from one connected feed, price and availability changes on your site flow through to your ads without you editing creative manually.

This distinction matters because it determines what your feed needs to feed. Catalog Manager, inside TikTok Ads Manager, is built specifically for advertising: it powers Catalog Ads, Dynamic Showcase Ads and related formats, and you can run it with or without a connected TikTok Shop. TikTok Shop, by contrast, is the organic storefront and commerce layer inside the TikTok app, and its product listings, inventory and orders are managed through TikTok Shop Seller Center or the TikTok Shop/Commerce API — a real-time commerce system, not a scheduled advertising feed.

In practice, many merchants maintain both: TikTok Shop for the products customers can buy in-app, and a Catalog Manager feed for the same (or a subset of) products so they can be advertised with Dynamic Showcase Ads or Catalog Ads. Feedance's TikTok integration is built for the Catalog Manager feed — the advertising catalog — not for syncing live Shop inventory or order data.

Catalog Manager accepts product data in several file formats and can pull it in three different ways.

Supported file formats: CSV, XML (RSS), XML (Atom), ZIP, and GZ. Note that GZ files compressed with the tar command are not supported.

Ways to add products:

1. Manual entry — fill in a form per product and import it, workable only for very small catalogs.
2. Data Feed Schedule — give TikTok a feed URL (and login credentials if the file is protected) and it fetches the file automatically on a recurring basis. This is the method Feedance uses to publish your feed.
3. File upload — upload a file from your desktop using TikTok's template, which is validated on import.

Catalog Manager's file limits are generous: each file must be under 50GB and contain fewer than 20 million products, so file size is rarely the constraint for most merchants.

TikTok's Catalog Product Parameters specify 9 required fields and 27 optional fields. Every product needs all 9 required fields populated, or it will be blocked from publishing with an error. TikTok's schema is deliberately close to the Google Shopping product data specification, so if you already maintain a Google Shopping feed, most fields map across directly.

1. In Feedance, build a TikTok-mapped feed: map your product data to Catalog Manager's field names (sku_id, title, description, availability, condition, price, link, image_link, brand, plus any optional fields you want to include) and publish it as a hosted feed URL in a supported format (CSV or XML).
2. In TikTok Ads Manager, open or create a catalog in Catalog Manager, then add a new product source using the Data Feed Schedule option.
3. Paste in the Feedance-hosted feed URL (and credentials, if you've restricted access), select the file format, and let TikTok run its first fetch and validation pass.
4. Set a refresh schedule for the connection and check Catalog Manager's Products view for any items flagged with errors. If you sell items in multiple sizes or colors, confirm each variant has a unique sku_id but shares the same item_group_id — this is the field TikTok uses to group variants into one product card, and it's the most common mapping gap when migrating a feed from another channel.

TikTok's own guidance is to refresh your catalog on a daily basis at minimum, to keep price and availability consistent between your catalog and your actual website. Data Feed Schedule fetches the feed automatically on a recurring basis rather than on a one-time basis, so once it's connected you don't need to re-upload manually.

With Feedance generating the feed, you control how current the underlying data is before TikTok ever fetches it — the practical ceiling on freshness is how often your product data (stock, price, promotions) actually changes upstream. When you update catalog data or apply catalog rules in Ads Manager, TikTok lets you choose whether the change applies to the current upload only, is saved for future uploads, or applies to both.

1. Fill in optional fields, not just the required 9. TikTok's own guidance is that optional attributes like shipping, brand, color, size and google_product_category help its system understand your products and improve advertising performance.
2. Classify every product into 2-3 levels of google_product_category rather than leaving it blank or using only the top level — this is called out specifically as improving discoverability.
3. Group variants correctly with item_group_id so TikTok can render a proper size/color selector on the product card, rather than showing each variant as a separate, disconnected item.
4. Keep titles and descriptions factual and front-loaded with the specific product name; avoid exaggerated claims, unrecognizable symbols and promotional language, all of which are flagged as common quality issues.
5. Use clean, product-only images at or above the 500x500px minimum, in a 1:1 ratio, free of watermarks, placeholders and heavy logo overlays.
6. Match your feed's refresh cadence to how often your prices and stock actually change, and refresh at least daily so your catalog stays consistent with your live site.

Does Feedance push products into TikTok Shop, or into Catalog Manager?
Feedance's TikTok integration generates a feed for Catalog Manager, the advertising-side product catalog in TikTok Ads Manager. TikTok Shop's storefront listings are a separate system managed through TikTok Shop Seller Center or the TikTok Shop/Commerce API.

How many product fields does TikTok actually require?
Nine: sku_id, title, description, availability, condition, price, link, image_link and brand. There are 27 additional optional fields you can include to improve ad performance.

What file formats can I feed into Catalog Manager?
CSV, XML (RSS), XML (Atom), ZIP and GZ. Note that GZ files compressed with the tar command are not supported.

How often does TikTok re-fetch my feed?
Once you set up a Data Feed Schedule with a hosted feed URL, TikTok fetches it automatically on a recurring basis. TikTok's own best-practice guidance is to refresh at least daily so your catalog stays consistent with live pricing and stock.

Why was one of my products rejected?
Usually a missing required field, an image that doesn't meet the size/quality requirements, or content that trips TikTok's catalog quality checks. You can appeal rejected products in Catalog Manager, individually or in bulk, up to 50 products per month, with review typically completing within a day.

How does TikTok handle product variants like size or color?
Give every variant of the same product the same item_group_id while keeping each variant's own sku_id unique. TikTok uses item_group_id to group variants into a single product card with a selector.

Is TikTok's feed schema similar to Google Shopping's?
Yes — TikTok's catalog specification closely mirrors the Google product data specification for most fields, which is why an existing Google Shopping feed usually maps over with minimal rework.