How to find winning TikTok ad creatives with Creative Center data

ParseBird·14 Oct 2026

Key Takeaways

What is TikTok Creative Center Top Ads? Top Ads is a public gallery inside TikTok Creative Center (ads.tiktok.com) that shows high-performing TikTok ads. You can filter it by country, industry, campaign objective, language, ad format, and time period, and sort by CTR, likes, reach, conversion rate, or 2-second and 6-second view rates.

Does TikTok show the real CTR of each top ad? No. Creative Center shows a CTR percentile, such as "Top 15%", not the raw click-through rate. In the scraped data ctr is that percentile as a decimal (0.15 means Top 15%), so lower is better.

What is a Spark ad on TikTok? A Spark ad is an ad that boosts an existing organic TikTok post, either from the brand's own account or from a creator who authorized it. The scraper flags these with isSparkAd, which helps separate creator-led ads from produced brand creative.

How many TikTok top ads can you scrape per run? Up to 3,000 per run, across periods of the last 7, 30, or 180 days.

Why TikTok Top Ads data matters for creative strategy

TikTok (short-video platform by ByteDance) rewards ad creative that looks native to the feed, which means production budgets matter less than hooks, pacing, and format. Performance marketers, UGC agencies, and creative strategists use TikTok Creative Center to see which ads are working in their industry, but browsing it means scrolling cards and opening each ad one by one.

The TikTok Top Ads Scraper returns the gallery as rows. One run gives you, for example, the top 300 Beauty & Personal Care ads in the UK over the last 30 days, sorted by CTR, with video links ready for review.

Field	What it tells you
`adTitle`, `brandName`	The ad caption and advertiser
`ctr`, `ctrTier`	CTR percentile (0.15 = Top 15%)
`likes`	Engagement on the ad
`costScore`, `budgetLevel`	Relative budget: 0, 1, 2 = Low, Medium, High
`isSparkAd`, `adFormatLabel`	Boosted organic post or standard ad
`durationSec`	Video length
`objectiveName`	Campaign goal, such as Reach, Traffic, or Conversions
`videoUrl720p`, `coverUrl`	The creative itself

How to scrape TikTok Top Ads by industry and market

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient("YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN")
run = client.actor("parsebird/tiktok-top-ads-scraper").call(run_input={
    "countryCode": "US",
    "period": "30",
    "industry": "Beauty & Personal Care",
    "objective": "campaign_objective_conversion",
    "orderBy": "ctr",
    "maxItems": 300,
    "extractDetails": True,
})
ads = client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).list_items().items

All the Creative Center filters are available as inputs:

Input	Values
`countryCode`	Two-letter market such as US, GB, DE, FR, JP, BR, or empty for all
`period`	`7`, `30`, or `180` days
`industry`	Creative Center industry, such as Apps, Games, E-Commerce (Non-app)
`objective`	traffic, app install, conversion, video view, reach, lead generation, product sales
`adFormat`	`Spark ads` or `Non-Spark ads`
`likeTier`	`1` (Top 1-20%) to `5` (Top 81-100%)
`orderBy`	`for_you`, `like`, `ctr`, `impression`, `cvr`, `play_2s_rate`, `play_6s_rate`
`keyword`	Matched against ad text and brand name

What does extractDetails add? The landing page URL, comment and share counts, every market the ad ran in, all campaign objectives, the ad source, and keywords and tags. It is billed as a separate details event, so turn it on when you need landing pages.

Reading TikTok ad performance signals correctly

Because Creative Center publishes tiers rather than raw numbers, compare ads within the same filtered set rather than across runs with different filters. A few practical rules:

Lower ctr is better. 0.05 is a Top 5% CTR ad. 0.40 is Top 40%.
budgetLevel is relative. "High" means high compared to other ads in Creative Center, not an absolute spend figure.
Sort orders answer different questions. ctr finds hooks that get clicks. play_6s_rate finds openings that hold attention. cvr finds ads that convert after the click.
The rank field depends on orderBy. Rank 1 for like and rank 1 for ctr are usually different ads.

Are Spark ads better than regular TikTok ads? It depends on the category, which is exactly what the data can tell you. Run the same industry and market twice, once with adFormat set to Spark ads and once to Non-Spark ads, and compare the CTR tiers of the top results.

Building a TikTok ad swipe file from scraped data

A swipe file is only useful if you can search it. A simple structure for each ad:

const swipe = ads.map((ad) => ({
  brand: ad.brandName,
  hook: ad.adTitle?.slice(0, 100),
  ctrTopPercent: Math.round(ad.ctr * 100),
  seconds: Math.round(ad.durationSec),
  spark: ad.isSparkAd,
  objective: ad.objectiveName,
  landingPage: ad.landingPageUrl ?? null,
  video: ad.videoUrl720p,
  source: ad.detailUrl,
}));

TikTok signs its video and cover URLs and they expire after a while. If you want to keep the creatives, download them right after the run. The TikTok and Pinterest video archiving guide covers saving videos to your own cloud storage. For transcribing ad scripts at scale, the approach in how to turn YouTube videos into text for AI pipelines works for TikTok MP4s too.

TikTok Top Ads scraper pricing

At the time of writing the scraper charges about $0.99 per 1,000 ads, plus about $1.99 per 1,000 detail lookups when extractDetails is on, with lower rates on paid Apify plans. See the actor page for current pricing.

FAQ

Do I need a TikTok Ads Manager account? No. The scraper reads the public Creative Center Top Ads gallery, which loads without logging in.

Is TikTok Top Ads the same as the TikTok Ad Library? No. Top Ads is a curated gallery of high-performing ads for inspiration. TikTok's Commercial Content Library is a separate transparency database. For organic trends from the same Creative Center (trending hashtags, sounds, and creators), use the TikTok Trends Scraper. For Google, YouTube, and Shopping ads, use the Google Ads Transparency Scraper.

How does this compare with Meta Ad Library research? Meta's library lists every active ad but gives no performance data, so run length is the main signal. TikTok Top Ads is already filtered to strong performers and adds CTR and engagement tiers. See how to scrape the Meta Ad Library for the Meta side.

Is it legal to scrape TikTok Creative Center? Creative Center is public, and the scraper reads only what it shows. Ad videos are still the advertisers' copyrighted work, so use them for internal research and inspiration, not republication.

Browse the Social Media category for more TikTok and social ad tools.