A funnel order gets credit for a cosmetics brand's lift

The test

TikTok's own case study on the Malaysian cosmetics brand The Raw. describes a full-funnel structure built around the 2024 Ramadan and Raya shopping season. The stated approach layers three ad formats: Reach and Frequency Top Feed ads for awareness, Community Interaction ads for engagement, and Shop Ads for conversion. The case study's central claim is about sequencing — that showing a branding ad before a Shop Ads retargeting ad changes how the retargeting ad performs, rather than treating each format as an independent channel.

What the evidence says

TikTok's account reports a 23.8% uplift in conversion rate among users who were shown branding ads before being retargeted, and a 10.2% reduction in cost per purchase for that same primed group compared with users retargeted without the earlier branding exposure. It separately reports a 16% improvement in Shop Ads bidding efficiency and a 15.5% boost in bidding efficiency tied to an expanded audience reach. The case study frames its key finding in its own words: that "priming users with branding ads" before a Shop Ads retarget improved conversion efficiency and lowered acquisition cost. That framing is TikTok's interpretation of its own data, built to demonstrate the value of running multiple TikTok ad formats together, not an outcome The Raw. has independently disclosed in this record.

The sample and the variance

The comparison here is internal to the campaign — primed users against unprimed users within the same brand and season — rather than a comparison against a separate control brand that skipped the branding-ad step entirely. That is a meaningful test design, closer to a true multivariate comparison than a single before-and-after campaign figure, but it still covers one brand, one category and one culturally specific shopping season, and TikTok's case-study hub gives no indication of the size of either the primed or unprimed audience group. A tactic that improves conversion during a high-intent gifting season may not transfer to a category or period without that seasonal purchase intent already in place.

What to try next

This is an editorial reading of a vendor case study, not a guarantee that ad sequencing will lift conversion for every advertiser. A marketer testing a similar full-funnel structure can reasonably ask for the primed and unprimed group sizes behind a reported uplift, isolate the branding-ad exposure as a single variable rather than changing creative and budget at the same time, and expect a seasonal high-intent period to influence results independent of the ad sequence itself.

• How large were the primed and unprimed comparison groups behind the 23.8% conversion uplift?
• Does the reported cost-per-purchase reduction hold outside a high-intent shopping season like Ramadan and Raya?
• What other variables, such as creative or budget allocation, changed alongside the ad sequencing in this campaign?

Sequencing a branding ad before a conversion ad is a documented, internally compared tactic in this one case, not a proven rule; TikTok's own description of the test is more rigorous than a single campaign total, but it remains a vendor's account of one brand's one season.