TikTok Ads Budget Calculator

Cheap impressions are not the same as cheap customers

A $5 CPM against Meta's $12 looks like a bargain, and often is not. What matters is cost per customer, and that depends on the whole chain: impressions, then click-through, then conversion. A third of the impression price with a third of the conversion rate leaves you exactly where you started.

The calculator carries all three through so the comparison is on cost per order rather than on CPM.

Traffic here is interrupted, not searching

Nobody opens TikTok to buy something. That is what pushes conversion rates below search and usually below Meta too, and it is why creative does more work here than targeting does — the ad has to create the intent it then converts.

Creative fatigue is faster than the numbers suggest

A campaign that clears break-even in its first week will often stop doing so in its third on the same settings, because the same audience has now seen the ad several times. A fortnight is a more honest planning window than a month, which is why the default here is 14 days.