Branded Effect

A Branded Effect is a custom AR filter, sticker, or lens that TikTok builds for your brand for people to use in their own videos.

You get an interactive effect, a face filter, a game, a try-on, a background, that users apply while filming. The point is that real people put your brand into content they make themselves, so it spreads through the app as normal posts, not just as ads you paid to place.

Picture a sunglasses brand. You commission a Branded Effect that lets anyone try the frames on their face, and every video someone films with it carries your name into their followers' feeds. Watch the number of videos created with the effect and the views those videos pull, since that user-made reach is the whole reason to do it.

The catch is that you cannot force people to use it. A Branded Effect only pays off if it is fun enough that users actually pick it up, so a dull or overly salesy effect just sits there no matter how much you spent building it.

You hand people a toy. Whether they play with it is out of your hands.