TikTok on November 2, 2026 published a post on its TikTok For Business blog arguing that the weeks after the Christmas shopping rush, which the industry calls "Q5," combine lower advertising prices with sustained user activity, and released two downloadable playbooks for mobile app and gaming advertisers that define the period as December 1, 2026 to January 31, 2027.

In Short

TikTok published a sales pitch telling advertisers that ads on its app get cheaper after November while people keep shopping, downloading apps and playing games into January. It matters to app makers, game studios and online shops deciding whether to keep spending after the holidays, because TikTok also published detailed rules on how much money campaigns need and which settings to switch on or off. The pitch rests on TikTok's own charts, which show no actual prices, and on survey figures from 2023, so the claims are hard to check from the material alone.

What TikTok published

The blog post, titled "Why Q5 is a golden opportunity for advertisers on TikTok," is filed under the category "Research & insights" and the topic "Community." TikTok lists its intended audience as large businesses, agencies and small businesses. It runs to about 1,500 words including its footnotes and closes with a call to download "TikTok's 2026 Q5 Playbooks for Apps and Gaming."

Those playbooks are two short PDF files hosted in TikTok's business library. The mobile apps document has four pages; the gaming document has three. Both carry the footer "CONFIDENTIAL & PROPRIETARY" on every page, even though the blog post links to them publicly. The blog post itself ends with a disclaimer stating that the document "is the property of TikTok Inc. and is intended solely for informational purposes," that TikTok "undertakes no obligation or responsibility to update any of the information," and that "Past performance does not guarantee or predict future performance."

The core argument appears in the first lines. "The holidays end, but performance doesn't," the post opens, before setting out its thesis: "With consumer demand carrying into the New Year and CPMs easing from their November peak, Q5 is an opportunity to reach engaged audiences and drive results on TikTok."

TikTok frames the period against a common industry view. "Many marketers view the post-holiday period, often called 'Q5' or the 'invisible quarter,' as a time of slowdown," according to the post. The company's response is that consumer activity "doesn't simply stop after the holidays."

A longer quarter than most

The playbooks give the window a precise boundary that the blog post does not. Both documents state: "Q5 Opportunity: 1 December 2026 - 31 January 2027." By PPC Land's count, that is 62 days.

The definition is notably wider than the one Meta used a year ago. When Meta published Q5 guidance for mobile game developers in October 2025, it described Q5 as running from late December to mid-January, a span of roughly three weeks. TikTok's version starts in the first week of December, when the Black Friday and Cyber Monday period has only just ended and Christmas shopping is still under way. The gaming playbook acknowledges the length directly in its creative guidance: "Q5 has a longer program window, thus more creative volume & creative refreshes help unlock better budget spendability & ROAS."

The blog post, by contrast, mostly describes the period in the conventional sense. Its consumer data refers to "the week immediately after December 25," and to content trends "within 30 days of Christmas." Neither document explains why TikTok chose December 1 as the start date.

The CPM argument

Price is the centre of the pitch. "TikTok's global CPMs decline through the Q5 window compared with the November peak, allowing advertisers to make their media budgets work harder," according to the blog post. The supporting footnote cites "TikTok internal data, October 2025-January 2026," covering global CPM trends across the Q5 window and growth in "New Year, New Me" content.

The playbooks illustrate the claim with a chart on their first pages. Both are headed "TikTok Global CPM Trend," both carry the annotation "CPM drops after shopping season," and both cite the same source: "TikTok Platform Data, October 2025 - January 2026." Neither chart has a vertical axis. No currency, no CPM values, no percentage change and no markets are shown. The horizontal axes carry two or three month labels and two dashed vertical markers labelled Nov 2025 and Jan 2026.

The two charts also show different curves, despite their identical titles and sources. In the apps version, the line spikes sharply just before the November marker, falls steadily through the period that follows, reaches its lowest point roughly midway between the two markers, holds a plateau and then dips again at the right edge. In the gaming version, the peak before the November marker is far less pronounced; the line drifts lower to a trough between the markers and then climbs back, so that by the January marker it sits close to its level at the November marker and is still rising when the chart ends. The material does not say whether the two charts measure different advertiser segments, placements or regions. And what does "global" cover? Neither chart says.

The playbooks translate the chart into a sales message. Under "Key Benefits," both list "Efficient CPMs, same engaged users," followed by "Less competition, more attention." The fourth of the "4 ways to maximize your Q5 impact" reads: "Lock in your budgets, monitor CPM trends and get ready to scale campaigns quickly once CPM declines."

Seasonal price falls after the holidays are well documented elsewhere. DataBeat's data showed US programmatic CPMs dropping 32.5% month over month in January 2026, with display down 36.6% and video down 27.4%, although prices were still 23.6% higher than a year earlier. Black Friday week sits at the opposite end: Billy Grace's analysis of the 2025 peak found median CPMs rising from about 6.50 euros to 8.83 euros in the week of November 24 to December 1. Those figures concern other channels and other measurement bases, and they do not establish the size of TikTok's own decline, which the playbooks do not quantify.

Two operational toggles appear in the playbooks without explanation. Under "Leverage Q5 product optimizations," both documents advise "leveraging Q5 promotion event toggle, budget pacing toggle, test new ad formats." Neither describes what the promotion event toggle does, where it sits in TikTok Ads Manager, or when it becomes available.

Where the consumer numbers come from

The blog post cites nine sources in its footnotes. Their dates and scope vary considerably.

The shopping figures open the case. "Seventy percent of consumers plan to shop during the week immediately after December 25 to take advantage of sales and redeem gift cards," according to the post, which credits the National Retail Federation's Holiday Consumer Research from December 2025. The same sentence continues: "On TikTok, 75% of users spend the same amount of time or more shopping during Q5, while 63% shop specifically for themselves." The 75% figure carries footnote 2. The 63% figure carries footnote 1, the NRF research, which the footnote does not describe as a survey of TikTok users.

Footnote 2 identifies the source of the 75% as the "TikTok Marketing Science Global Custom Q5 Survey via AYTM, September 2023," covering TikTok users aged 18 and over, with a sample of 2,250. A second footnote, number 6, cites the "TikTok Marketing Science Q5 Survey via AYTM, September 2023" with a sample of 2,240. That survey supplies three more figures: 85% of people spend the same amount of time or more on TikTok after the holidays, 73% expect to spend the same amount of time or more downloading apps, and 64% expect to spend the same or more time playing video games. Both footnotes date the fieldwork to September 2023, so the survey was conducted more than three years before the Q5 window the playbooks describe. The post does not explain why the two citations give different sample sizes.

Two figures rest on a footnote that is unfinished. "Fifty-two percent of shoppers give gift cards as holiday presents, and 40% of TikTok users plan to spend the value of their gift card or more," according to the post. Footnote 4, which supports both numbers, reads in full: "Holiday gift card research and TikTok user gift card spending data; full source details to be confirmed."

TikTok's own platform data supplies one trend figure. "TikTok has seen a 169% increase in 'New Year, New Me' content within 30 days of Christmas," according to the post. The footnote cites internal data from October 2025 to January 2026. No baseline is given: the material does not say what volume of content the increase starts from, how the content was classified, or which comparison period was used.

Apps: a January spending figure without a definition

For app marketers, the blog post leads with a Sensor Tower statistic. "Twelve percent of mobile ad spend shifts into January, above the 10.5% average for February-December," according to the post, citing Sensor Tower's "January App & Spend Trends, 2026."

The two numbers cannot both be shares of annual spending. By PPC Land's arithmetic, if January took 12% of a year's mobile ad spend and each of the other 11 months averaged 10.5%, the year would sum to 127.5%. The figures must therefore measure something else, such as a share of a different base or a growth rate, but the post does not define them, and the Sensor Tower report is not linked.

The second app figure comes from an outside measurement firm, but on a narrow base. "In a US Android study, Health & Wellness users acquired through TikTok generated 117% higher monthly revenue per user than those acquired through other channels," according to the post. The footnote cites "Adjust, Driving App Performance on TikTok, 2024; US Android, Health & Wellness." The comparison covers one app category, one operating system and one country, from data published two years ago. The post does not say which other channels formed the comparison set.

A further claim carries no number at all. The post states that "Social Apps" are "seeing more efficient CPAs in Q5," without a figure, a footnote or a definition of the category.

Against that backdrop, TikTok lists the products it wants app marketers to use. Campaigns run under Smart+, the automated campaign type TikTok introduced in October 2024. Advertisers can optimise for installs through App Install campaigns, for in-app actions through App Event Optimization (AEO), or for higher-value outcomes through Value-Based Optimization. Bidding options are Max Delivery for volume, Target Cost Per Result for CPA targets and Target ROAS (tROAS) for return on ad spend. On the creative side, the post names Creative Auto-select, which TikTok first limited to Smart+ App campaigns when it was introduced in January 2026, and TikTok Playables, a playable ad format that "gives audiences an interactive way to experience an app before downloading."

Short-form video drama gets a separate line. "For entertainment and short-form drama advertisers, Q5 is also an opportunity to scale viewer acquisition through TikTok Growth Max campaigns," according to the post. TikTok began pitching Growth Max to episodic drama apps in May 2026 with a claim of three times higher Day-0 ROAS for in-app advertising campaigns, based on internal tests without published methodology.

Text carried over from the gaming version

The apps playbook appears to reuse copy written for games. Its subtitle reads: "Capture the low-CPM opportunity after the holiday peak season and scale gaming performance. This is the chance for you to drive efficient acquisition and conversion while maximizing high-value players." The same subtitle appears word for word on the gaming playbook. The apps document's audience box is headed "Best Suited for Gaming Apps looking to," while its "Key Benefits" box, a few lines above, addresses "non-commerce Apps."

Budget rules for app campaigns

The remaining three pages of the apps playbook are technical, and they contain the most specific numbers in the material.

Smart+ Target Result

For Smart+ Target Result campaigns, TikTok sets a minimum duration before advertisers make changes. "Let Smart+ campaign run for at least seven days to pass the learning phase," the playbook states. "Avoid adjusting the budget, changing the target cpa, or pausing the campaign during this period." The learning phase is the period in which the delivery system gathers conversion data before its predictions settle.

Daily budgets are expressed as multiples of the target bid, and they depend on the optimisation goal:

  • MAI campaigns: at least 50 times the target bid
  • AEO campaigns: at least 10 times the target bid
  • MCO campaigns: at least 15 times the target bid

The playbook does not spell out MAI or MCO. As an illustration, PPC Land applied the multiples to hypothetical bids: an MAI campaign with a $4 target bid would need a daily budget of at least $200, and an AEO campaign with a $40 target bid would need at least $400 a day.

The target bid itself should equal or exceed the advertiser's average cost per action over the previous seven days, which the playbook calls "BAU CPA 7D." TikTok recommends taking that number from its own tool. "TikTok Ads Manager's Target CPA bid recommendation is based BAU CPA 7D, we strongly encourage advertisers to use the TTAM Target CPA recommended bid, as it reflects the most accurate signal for campaign optimization," according to the playbook. Advertisers are told to upload at least six creative assets at launch and to switch on Creative Autoselect against creative fatigue. For D0 tROAS and Cost Cap campaigns, the playbook recommends enabling a "Goal-Based Budget Increase Tool," which it says drives "incremental conversions with efficient ROAS."

In-app purchase campaigns

Purchase-focused campaigns face a higher creative requirement and a conversion floor. Advertisers are told to "let Smart+ campaign run for at least seven days, ensuring >10 daily conversions to pass the learning phase." By PPC Land's arithmetic, that implies at least 70 conversions before a campaign leaves the learning phase.

Budget floors are set by bid strategy. Maximum Delivery campaigns need more than 10 times the historical CPA per day; Cost Cap campaigns more than 10 times the TikTok CPA of the last 30 days; Target ROAS (D0) and Highest Value campaigns, on iOS or Android, more than 15 times the TikTok unique CPA of the last 30 days. Bids for Cost Cap and Target ROAS should match the advertiser's TikTok results from the last 30 days in the same target region and for the same optimisation event. The creative minimum rises to 15 assets.

For D0 Target ROAS, the playbook gives a specific starting point: "Set 80% of L30D ROAS as D0 ROAS Bid Input." The accompanying note reads: "Start here for exploration. Ramp up post-learning phase to get closer to client's KPI."

The measurement settings TikTok wants switched off

One page of the apps playbook concerns the settings advertisers hold with their mobile measurement partner, the third-party firm that attributes app installs and in-app events to ad networks. The page is headed "Key Settings Modules on MMP that may affect TikTok Delivery Performance" and covers two providers, AppsFlyer and Adjust.

For AppsFlyer, the playbook's first row reads "Advanced Privacy: Off" and "Aggregated Advanced Privacy: Off." The second reads "Reinstall Attribution: On." For Adjust, the instruction is to "Enable probabilistic modeling for clicks/impressions." For both providers, TikTok asks advertisers to check that view-through attribution "aligns with the client's desired business objectives," naming two checkpoints, the toggle status and the lookback window. A view-through conversion credits an ad that was seen but not clicked. Where an advertiser wants to run retargeting, the playbook says the re-engagement or re-attribution toggle should be enabled.

The AppsFlyer setting carries consequences that the playbook does not describe. According to AppsFlyer's help center, Advanced Privacy forms part of its Aggregated Advanced Privacy framework, applies to iOS 14.5 and later, and is on by default for each app. When it is on, postbacks sent to ad networks for users who have not authorised tracking under Apple's App Tracking Transparency, and whose advertising identifier is therefore unavailable, are aggregated: they omit the click ID, customer user ID, AppsFlyer ID, IDFA, IDFV, device model, operating system version and carrier, and timestamps are rounded down to the hour. With the setting off, according to AppsFlyer, the regular postback template is used and user-level data can be shared.

That population is large. Adjust's 2026 mobile app report put average App Tracking Transparency opt-in at 38% in the first quarter of 2026, meaning most iOS users in its data had not opted in. The TikTok playbook does not mention App Tracking Transparency, user consent or privacy at any point beyond the names of the AppsFlyer settings themselves.

For further detail, the apps playbook prints a link and the gaming playbook refers readers to an "MMP setup checklist." Both lead to the same wiki page on bytedance.larkoffice.com, a ByteDance Lark workspace address, rather than to TikTok's public help center.

Event mapping

The playbook also sets out which in-app events advertisers must send to TikTok, by business model. Purchase-only apps must map Install, Launch App, Registration and Purchase, adding Value and Currency only when using Highest Value or Target ROAS optimisation. Subscription-only apps must map Install, Launch App and Registration, plus Start Trial and Subscription where applicable. TikTok stresses that the last two must stay separate: "Ensure that Start Trial and Subscription events are reported as separate events (not combined) to meet the signal requirements for subscription AEO." Apps that combine purchases and subscriptions need all of the above.

Gaming: seven-day value and a $300 floor

The gaming case starts with spending data. "Global mobile game spending reached $7.1 billion in January 2026, up 5.4% month over month, while TikTok audiences are 1.3-1.9x more likely to be core mobile gamers than the average internet user," according to the blog post, which cites Sensor Tower Audience Insights for January to June 2026. The post does not explain what the range of 1.3 to 1.9 times represents, whether markets, age groups or another split.

TikTok's product emphasis for games is D7 Value-Based Optimization. According to the post, Smart+ D7 VBO "helps gaming advertisers acquire players with greater potential to generate long-term in-app ad revenue (IAA) and in-app purchases (IAP)" by "optimizing toward cumulative user value over the first seven days." Two bidding strategies are offered: D7 tROAS, which optimises for return on ad spend, and D7 Highest Value, which aims "to maximize user value and support budget delivery." A footnote adds the platform limits: the in-app advertising version is new and requires the TikTok iOS SDK, while the in-app purchase version with Highest Value is Android only. For iOS campaigns, the post says integrating TikTok's SDK "can provide richer revenue and purchase signals, helping strengthen value prediction and IAA optimization."

The gaming playbook lists the full set as "IAA D7 VBO (Highest Value & Target ROAS) *NEW, IAP D0 tROAS (iOS, AOS), IAP D7 VBO (Highest Value - AOS)."

The structure echoes Meta's approach. Meta reported in November 2025 that value optimisation delivered 29% higher ROAS than conversion-volume optimisation in its internal experiments, and its Q5 guidance from the month before emphasised in-app advertising revenue, which for the top 100 games rose from early November and received another boost from December 25 to January 1, according to Meta.

In-app advertising campaigns

The gaming playbook's IAA page applies the same seven-day rule: "Let TikTok IAA campaign run for at least seven days to pass the learning phase. Avoid adjusting the budget, changing the target ROAS, or pausing the campaign during this period."

The budget rules here take a different form from the apps playbook. Both D0 and D7 Target ROAS campaigns call for a daily budget of more than three times the advertiser's historical average campaign budget, with a minimum of $300 a day. The same table cell also contains the line "Minimum $300 x CPI (based on last 7 days)," which the playbook does not explain. Target bids should match the advertiser's D0 or D7 ROAS from the previous seven days in the same region and for the same optimisation event.

Measurement setup applies to "Appsflyer/Adjust only," according to the playbook. The creative minimum is 15 assets, with Creative Autoselect switched on and TikTok Playables suggested for testing. The playbook also recommends splitting campaigns by geography into three groups, US, EU and rest of world, "for more learnings within 1 region." On bids, the guidance is to start from the client's D0 or D7 ROAS target and then "Adjust bids downward or towards achieved ROAS post-learning phase."

Where the two playbooks disagree

The gaming playbook's in-app purchase page covers the same campaign type as the apps playbook's purchase page, but several details differ.

The names are not the same. The apps document labels its two app-event strategies Maximum Delivery and Cost Cap; the gaming document uses Maximum Results and Target Cost Per Result. The blog post uses a third combination, Max Delivery and Target Cost Per Result.

The budget multiples are not the same either. In the apps playbook, Cost Cap campaigns need more than 10 times the last-30-day CPA, and Highest Value campaigns more than 15 times the unique CPA. In the gaming playbook, Target Cost Per Result campaigns need more than 15 times the last-30-day CPA, and Highest Value campaigns 10 times the historical cost per purchase. The gaming version adds that Highest Value is available at D0 on Android and iOS, and at D7 on Android only.

Neither document explains whether the different multiples reflect different advertiser categories or a difference between drafts. Both end with the same line: "For more details, please reach out to your TikTok representatives for more information!"

Commerce: GMV Max Pro in a US beta

The commerce section of the blog post contains no data and no playbook. It names two products. Smart+ Catalog Ads, according to TikTok, "automate creative and product matching at scale." GMV Max, the automated campaign type for TikTok Shop that optimises toward GMV, "helps advertisers scale TikTok Shop performance by optimizing campaigns toward sales."

The only new detail is a variant called GMV Max Pro, which "takes optimization a step further by incorporating operational costs, helping advertisers focus on profitability and not just ROAS," according to the post. It has two capabilities "currently in US beta":

  • Affiliate cost optimization, which "considers affiliate commission rates alongside creative performance when ranking and selecting creatives"
  • Smart coupons, which help "drive incremental purchases by offering coupons to shoppers who need an extra incentive to buy"

The post does not give a launch date, eligibility criteria or pricing for either feature. It does not say who funds the coupons, how the system decides which shoppers receive one, or how TikTok measures whether a resulting purchase was incremental. Costs already weigh on TikTok Shop sellers: PPC Land reported in June that Smart Promotion now costs sellers 3.5% of store GMV outside campaign periods and 4.5% during major campaigns. GMV Max has also carried an ROI Protection scheme that issues ad credits when campaigns fall below 90% of their target return.

The closing pitch

The post ends with three recommendations, phrased as directives to advertisers: buy media more efficiently, scale user acquisition, and build momentum into the first quarter. "Q5 isn't a bonus period. It's a strategic growth sprint that helps advertisers capture immediate opportunities while laying the groundwork for the year ahead," according to TikTok.

The final paragraph hedges its own central claim. "Sustained audience activity, potentially lower CPMs, and performance solutions across Apps, Gaming, and Commerce make Q5 a valuable opportunity to drive growth on TikTok," the post states. The word "potentially" appears three times in the post, each time attached to costs or efficiency: "potentially lower media costs," "potentially more efficient acquisition" and "potentially lower CPMs." The budget section, by contrast, states without qualification that global CPMs decline compared with the November peak.

Why this matters for marketers

Q5 has become a contested sales season among the large platforms. Meta made its case to game developers in October 2025; Pinterest told European advertisers in September 2026 that one in two of its monthly European users keep shopping after the festive season. TikTok's version runs longer than Meta's, stretching the window back to December 1, and it goes further into operational detail, with explicit budget multiples, bid formulas and measurement settings.

For app and game marketers, those operational details are the substance. The budget floors, from 10 to 50 times the target bid or the recent CPA, set the minimum spend TikTok considers necessary for a campaign to leave the learning phase. The 15-asset creative minimum for purchase and gaming campaigns has a cost of its own. And the measurement page asks advertisers to change a default privacy setting with their attribution provider, a change that affects which user-level data reaches ad networks, not only how campaigns deliver.

The pitch also arrives as TikTok widens its app-advertising business. The company opened its TikTok Ad Network of nearly 400,000 apps to US advertisers in October 2026, and AppsFlyer's 2025 Performance Index ranked TikTok for Business ninth overall and third among iOS and Android non-gaming media sources. Acquisition costs are rising: Adjust's 2026 report measured gaming cost per install up 30% to $0.56.

What the material does not establish is the size of the price advantage it promises. TikTok's CPM charts carry no values, the two versions show different shapes under the same title, and most of the figures describing TikTok users' behaviour in Q5 come from a survey fielded in September 2023. Marketers comparing TikTok's Q5 offer with Meta's or Pinterest's have, in effect, a qualitative claim about direction and a precise set of instructions about spending.

Timeline

Summary

Who: TikTok, through its TikTok For Business blog and two PDF playbooks, addressing mobile app marketers, game studios, short-form drama and entertainment apps, and TikTok Shop commerce advertisers, with supporting figures attributed to the National Retail Federation, Sensor Tower, Adjust and TikTok's own survey and platform data.

What: A blog post arguing that the post-holiday "Q5" period offers lower CPMs and sustained user activity, plus playbooks that set budget multiples of 10 to 50 times the target bid for app campaigns, a $300 daily minimum for in-app advertising campaigns in games, seven-day learning periods, creative minimums of six to 15 assets, and measurement settings that include switching off AppsFlyer's Advanced Privacy features. The CPM charts carry no values, the main survey dates from September 2023, one source footnote reads "full source details to be confirmed," and the two playbooks give different budget multiples for the same campaign type.

When: The blog post was published on November 2, 2026. The playbooks define the Q5 window as December 1, 2026 to January 31, 2027.

Where: Globally, according to TikTok's description of its CPM data; the GMV Max Pro capabilities are in a US beta, the Adjust revenue comparison covers US Android only, and the gaming playbook splits campaigns into US, EU and rest of world.

Why: TikTok is competing with Meta and Pinterest, both of which have published their own Q5 guidance, for advertiser budgets in a period many marketers treat as a slowdown, while it expands its app-advertising business through Smart+, Growth Max and its ad network.