TikTok Custom Audiences let you retarget people who have already interacted with your Shopify store or your TikTok content. Instead of only running cold traffic campaigns, you can serve ads specifically to people who visited your product pages, added to cart but did not purchase, or bought from you before.
This guide covers how to set up each type of TikTok Custom Audience and how to use them effectively for Shopify retargeting.
Types of TikTok Custom Audiences
TikTok offers four main types of Custom Audiences for Shopify advertisers:
- Website traffic audiences — built from TikTok Pixel events on your Shopify store
- Customer file audiences — built by uploading a list of customer emails or phone numbers from Shopify
- Engagement audiences — built from people who interacted with your TikTok content (video views, profile visits, ad engagement)
- App activity audiences — built from mobile app events (not relevant for most Shopify stores)
Setting Up Website Traffic Custom Audiences
Go to TikTok Ads Manager → Assets → Audiences → Create Audience → Custom Audience → Website Traffic.
You can create audiences based on:
- All website visitors in the last X days
- Visitors who triggered a specific event (e.g. ViewContent, AddToCart)
- Visitors who triggered one event but NOT another (e.g. AddToCart but NOT CompletePayment)
The most valuable audiences for Shopify retargeting:
Abandoned Cart Audience
Create an audience of users who triggered AddToCart in the last 14 days but did NOT trigger CompletePayment in the last 14 days. These are high-intent visitors who came close to buying. This audience typically converts at 3–5x the rate of cold audiences.
Initiated Checkout Audience
Users who triggered InitiateCheckout but not CompletePayment in the last 7 days. Even higher intent than add-to-cart. This should be your highest priority retargeting audience.
Product Page Visitors
Users who triggered ViewContent in the last 30 days but not AddToCart. Use longer lookback windows (30 days) here because product views are early-funnel signals.
Past Purchasers
Users who triggered CompletePayment in the last 90 days. Use this for upsell campaigns, new product launches, or loyalty campaigns.
How Long to Set Your Lookback Window
TikTok allows lookback windows from 1 to 180 days. The right window depends on your audience size and purchase cycle:
- InitiateCheckout: 7–14 days (very recent, high intent)
- AddToCart: 14–30 days
- ViewContent: 30–60 days
- Past Purchasers (for cross-sell): 90–180 days
If your audience is under 1,000 users (TikTok’s minimum for delivery), increase the lookback window or combine event types. TikTok needs at least 1,000 matched users to deliver to a Custom Audience.
Setting Up Customer File Audiences
From Shopify, export your customer list (email or phone) as a CSV. Go to TikTok Ads Manager → Assets → Audiences → Create Audience → Custom Audience → Customer File.
Upload your CSV and map the columns to the correct data types (email or phone). TikTok will hash the data and match it against TikTok user accounts.
Best uses for customer file audiences:
- Exclude current customers from prospecting campaigns to avoid wasted spend
- Target past purchasers with new product launches
- Retarget customers who have not purchased in 90+ days
TikTok typically matches 20–40% of customer emails to TikTok accounts, depending on your customer demographic. Younger audiences match at higher rates because TikTok skews younger.
Setting Up Engagement Audiences
Engagement audiences are built from people who interacted with your TikTok account. Go to Create Audience → Engagement → TikTok Business Account.
Options include:
- People who watched your videos (25%, 50%, 75%, or 100% completion)
- People who clicked on your profile
- People who engaged with your ads (liked, commented, shared)
Video view audiences are especially useful for awareness-to-purchase funnels. If someone watched 75% of your product video, they are warm to your brand even if they did not visit your site yet.
Why Your Custom Audiences May Not Be Delivering
The most common reason TikTok Custom Audiences do not deliver is that the underlying pixel is not capturing enough events to build a sufficiently large audience. If your TikTok Pixel is missing AddToCart or ViewContent events, those audiences will be too small to deliver.
Fix the pixel first. An audience can only be as large as the events feeding it.
Get Your TikTok Tracking Ready for Retargeting
Retargeting campaigns on TikTok only work when your pixel is capturing all the right events with enough data to build audiences above 1,000 users. If your event volume looks low or your audiences stay in “populating” status, you likely have a tracking issue.
We audit your TikTok Pixel, Events API, and audience setup and tell you exactly what is blocking your retargeting from working. Book your free Shopify tracking audit here.