TikTok sharpens full-funnel play with AI, creative tools and community-led commerce push

Plenty of platforms promise full-funnel performance. TikTok is trying to build it with generative AI, creator tools, mid-funnel buying formats and first-party trend data now bundled into a pitch for serious brand growth.

At its fifth annual TikTok World event, the company unveiled a raft of new products aimed at turning attention into action and culture into commerce.

The announcement was paired with a local Australian launch, The Consideration Gap, where TikTok AUNZ head of partnerships Amy Bradshaw told marketers the platform’s newest tools are designed to “turn engagement into impact.”

“Brands need more than just visibility,” Bradshaw said. “They need tools that drive real connection and conversion.”

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At the centre of TikTok’s updated offering is Market Scope, a first-of-its-kind analytics platform that helps brands understand audience behaviour across the funnel. It’s paired with Brand Consideration ads, a new mid-funnel buying option aimed at shifting users from awareness to interest.

Then there’s TikTok One, the platform’s revamped creative suite, which now includes: Insight Spotlight, the social media giant’s new trend tracker, using first-party audience data to show what content is working, and why.

Another is Content Suite, a searchable, ranked library of user-generated videos that mention brands and can be turned into ads instantly.

The third, called Partner Exchange, is a refreshed creator and agency matchmaking service designed to connect marketers with proven TikTok-native talent.

Together, these tools aim to reduce the creative friction many brands face on TikTok, especially as expectations grow around native content quality and speed.

Generative AI joins the party

TikTok also introduced Symphony Creative Studio, its new generative AI-powered video generator. It promises to help brands produce TikTok-ready video content “from just a few inputs,” speeding up workflows and lowering production barriers.

While TikTok has been steadily expanding its ad tech stack, this launch feels like a more coordinated shift — one that positions the platform as not just a cultural engine, but a serious performance partner for marketers.

With YouTube Shorts heating up, Meta leaning hard into Reels and retail media arms racing toward closed-loop data, TikTok’s push into full-funnel territory is as much a defensive play as it is a growth strategy.

But with its cultural cachet, creative infrastructure, and a billion-strong global audience, it may be better placed than most to connect the dots between discovery and decision.

Meta's new tools

Meta, meanwhile, has announced an expanded suite of performance tools designed to give advertisers more control over campaign outcomes. The updates include new options for Value Optimization, Incremental Attribution, and Value Rules, allowing brands to prioritise specific business goals such as profit margin, customer retention, or first-time purchases.

The company said advertisers using its “maximise value of conversions” setting saw an average 12% lift in return on ad spend. Meta is also testing the ability to optimise campaigns based on profit, and expanding support for custom event values outside of purchases.

The update reflects a broader shift across platforms toward AI-driven optimisation focused on business outcomes, not just conversion volume. Tools like Incremental Attribution now allow marketers to toggle real-time lift-based reporting directly in Ads Manager, while integration with external measurement platforms such as Adobe Advertising and Triple Whale will enable more tailored attribution models over the next year.

"Advertisers often have unique ways to attribute the ROI of a specific channel or ad platform. To guide our ads system to deliver on what they value most, we need to understand how they measure and provide options to share this with Meta," Damian Kim, Meta’s APAC director of monetisation, said.

"We are also expanding the availability of Value Rules, a product that gives advertisers the option to set up rules in Ads Manager that assign higher value to certain types of customers, ultimately giving them another way to steer our AI-powered ads system towards higher ROAS outcomes."