TikTok Agency Ad Account: Requirements, Costs and How to Apply

TikTok says you can't publish any ads until your account is approved. We've pulled what it checks from several of its pages into six rows, and the third column is where we'd look first.

Before you upload anything, check the file against TikTok's document rules. JPEG, JPG, PNG or PDF up to 10MB, all four corners visible, in colour outside the US, China and Australia, and no copies of copies or third-party watermarks. The document also shouldn't expire within the next 30 days.

TikTok says most account reviews take less than 24 hours. If yours gets turned down, its FAQ tells you to re-enter the information and request a review, then raise a ticket under Account Review within 3 working days if you still disagree.

TikTok writes it up as two scenarios in the same flow. An advertiser fills in the account name, time zone and contact details. An agency also provides the client's company details and billing information, and the account belongs to the agency's Business Center.

Two details matter if you plan to run more than one account. Once the first account for a client is approved, the agency can reuse the verified legal entity certificate, and TikTok says accounts created with a verified certificate are approved automatically. And verification cascades. Verifying a client company verifies every ad account under that client, so you do the paperwork once.

With us it looks like this. The account comes from our Business Center and we share it to yours as a partner, with Operator access by default and Admin if you ask. There's no card on it. Your top up raises the spend cap, which is a lifetime cap, so when total spend reaches it the account stops until the next top up. That's the thing to watch at night. A creative catches at 11 p.m., spend climbs, and by 1 a.m. the account has hit its cap with you asleep. In the Adtucon Platform you see spend cap, amount spent and remaining budget per account, and you can top up or top down from there.

Two meters run at once, TikTok's media and the provider's fee.

TikTok sets the floor for media. Its budget page says a daily budget must exceed $50 at campaign level and $20 at ad group level, and its own example puts one ad group on a 31-day lifetime budget at $620 at least. Keep a campaign on the daily minimum for a month and you're at a little over $1,500.

On top sits the fee. Ours is charged on each deposit and drops as your monthly volume grows. What you pay depends on your vertical.

"From" means the starting rate, so ask for your number before you top up. And a vertical on this table means we can price it, which isn't the same as TikTok accepting it in your market. Social casino is the sharpest case. TikTok's Gambling and Games policy closes it in some countries and sets conditions in others, and real-money gambling needs certification on top of that.

If you'd rather pay flat, the Fixed Plan is $299 a month up to $10,000 of spend or $799 up to $30,000, per platform, with 0% on spend and the Adtucon Platform included. Do the sum before you pick it. At a 4% fee the $299 plan starts to pay at around $7,500 a month and the $799 plan at around $20,000. At 2% the percentage stays cheaper all the way, so the flat plan is for people paying more than the starting rate. Above $30,000 a month you go back to the percentage.

We also issue vouchers on TikTok, which are ad balance from us.

They're for new clients, or for a platform you haven't run with us yet, one per company per platform every 12 months. The Starter needs a first top up of at least $1,000, and a voucher doesn't convert back to cash. All the conditions are on the TikTok offers page. TikTok runs its own incentives for new advertisers, with its own rules, and those are separate from ours.

Whatever provider you talk to, ask what else gets charged, such as setup, per-account fees, currency conversion or a monthly minimum. We've laid out the models side by side in how much an agency ad account costs.

Have these open before you start. Your legal company name exactly as it appears on your registration, the registration document itself, your website, the landing pages you plan to run, your vertical and the countries you want.

1. Send us the vertical, the landing page and the market. We check them before you pay anything. If the answer is no, you hear it then.
2. Set up a Business Center if you don't have one. You'll need a TikTok for Business login. Choose "I am an advertiser", enter the full legal name and check the time zone and currency. TikTok warns that you may not be able to change your business information later.
3. Give us your company details. We enter them when the account is created, so a typo here is the one that costs you time.
4. We create the account and share it to your Business Center. You work in TikTok Ads Manager as you would on your own account.
5. Top up. The money raises the spend cap and you can launch.
6. Launch, then wait for review. TikTok says most ads are reviewed within 24 hours, sometimes longer. Editing the targeting location or the creative triggers a new review.

You can also start from the new account form or the TikTok account page.

We don't print a delivery time for TikTok accounts. We print a time only where we've counted it, and on the numbers we publish that's Meta. Ask in chat what's realistic for your vertical this week.

An agency account doesn't skip moderation. TikTok says all ads are reviewed, and its Advertiser Account Policy doesn't allow attempts to get around its systems or moderation. If someone sells you an account with a way around review, they're selling you a suspension.

Agency accounts get suspended too. TikTok's suspension page even has a line written for them, saying suspended accounts can't be used to create new ad accounts or add money to ad accounts. If that's already your problem, go to what to do when a TikTok ad account is suspended.

Your ramp still matters. TikTok's budget guidance says to raise budgets by no more than 40% at a time during the learning phase and 30% after it, and no more often than every two days. In our own TikTok data, the accounts that spend hardest on day one are the ones that get limited most often, so we'd start lower than the money on the account suggests.

The word "whitelisted" won't help here either. It means three different things on TikTok, and we've separated them in this piece. Badges are worth a look, but read them for what they are. TikTok's Agency Partner and Premier Agency Partner badges belong to agencies and sit in its partner directory. We don't claim either one.

If you run one brand, your card works and you can live with TikTok's normal flow, you may be fine in your own Ads Manager, with TikTok's new advertiser incentives on top if you qualify.

The fee starts to earn its place when you run several ad accounts and want the money in one panel, when you need a person who reads your landing page before TikTok does, or when business verification and account review keep eating your week. It's also a sensible second door. If your main account stops on a Friday, you want somewhere to go that's already set up. That's the reason behind never relying on one ad account, and it holds as long as what you run in the second account is clean.

If you want the setup checked against a written list, Adtucon Certified is our own programme. TikTok doesn't issue it or endorse it.