TikTok used its Creators Summit in Los Angeles on Thursday, September 24, to walk brands and agencies through the tools it has built into TikTok One, the company’s hub for creator partnerships. Each tool helps a brand find a creator whose audience matches its customers. “Followers are the starting point, but fit is the strategy,” the hosts told the room at the opening session, which was also streamed on TikTok Live.

The company put six creators on stage over the course of the day: tech creator Romina Gafur (@rominagafur), film trivia creator Hunter Clark (@hiddenmoviedetails), culture and cinema comedian Yasin Muhammad (@yaseenthatguy), food creator Milad Mirg (@miladmirg), LIVE baking creator Deliciousness Bakery (@deliciousnessbakery), and TikTok Shop seller Mandys Pena (@simplymandys), who has hosted six LIVE shopping streams that each reached $1 million.

Search by Audience, or Describe the Creator

The company highlighted two ways for brands to find creators. Creator AI Search lets a brand filter creators by audience, niche, and how their past posts performed. A creator marketing agent takes a plain description of the creator a brand wants and returns matching profiles. TikTok’s example was a car brand planning a road-trip campaign with dogs, which the agent would match with creators who make pet content.

Once a brand has found a creator, TikTok One offers four ways to buy: a fixed-fee Custom Collab, a Branded Buzz hashtag campaign paid from a shared reward pool, a Creative Challenge where creators earn a share of ad spend when their video runs as an ad, and the Spark Opportunity Program, which lets brands promote a creator’s existing post as a Spark Ad.

Payment Inside the Platform

TikTok also presented “TikTok One Pay,” a new payment system built into TikTok One. The advertiser pays through the platform, and TikTok handles the process from invoice to transfer, so creators no longer chase brands for payment. Creators are paid within 30 days of a video posting, which is faster than the payment terms common in creator marketing. TikTok charges no transaction fees or commissions and covers the cost itself, so creators keep 100% of what they earn.

A Label for Vetted Creators

The company also promoted “TikTok One Plus,” the invite-only program it rolled out last month for creators it considers high quality. Members receive exclusive brand opportunities and extra pay on top of their TikTok One deals, including 15% more on Custom Collab work, with no extra deliverables and at no added cost to brands. Brands can find members through a “High-quality content creator” label under the recommendation tags in TikTok One. To qualify, creators must be 18 or older, live in the U.S. or Mexico, have at least 100,000 followers, and hold a personal account in good standing. TikTok sends invitations by email.

TikTok’s case for the tools rests on its own numbers. According to the company, creator content on TikTok gets 52% higher click-through rates than non-creator content, and brand memory roughly doubles when a brand gets both the creator fit and the creative right. The company said that the number of creators earning through TikTok One is up 90% year over year and that a second campaign with the same creator almost always beats the first. 

What Fit Looked Like for Hyundai

Karen Ram, VP of Social Content and Strategy at Canvas Worldwide, Hyundai’s agency, gave the summit its clearest example. She pointed to two of the brand’s creator videos shown on stage: Yasin’s split-screen self-interview and Milad Mirg’s close-up of a glistening chicken wing, each opening on a hook the creator is already known for. At every kickoff call, she said, the agency reminds creators why they were chosen, so the branded video still sounds like them.

Ram’s main example was food critic Keith Lee, who has 17.3 million TikTok followers. When Lee posted a video of himself driving a new Hyundai Palisade off the lot, the agency reached out right away. Lee turned out to be a longtime Hyundai owner who had driven Uber in one of the brand’s cars.

According to the agency’s Shorty Awards entry, the first campaign with Lee drew 29 million video views and a click-through rate that’s 645% above Hyundai’s benchmark. It also added more than 4 million search views on TikTok in a week. Hyundai and Lee have since made at least 10 videos together, and Ram said the brand has kept his format each time. “We have never tried to deviate from that voice or that style,” she said.

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