Cart-abandoner retargeting cuts from one hero ad: three trims, $0.06

TikTok's holiday guide says that in the peak period, November to December, you should ramp up promotions with bold captions, countdown stickers, and festive overlays, and prioritize retargeting warm audiences such as cart abandoners and video engagers (TikTok Ads guide, read 2026-10-05). You do not need new footage for that. Three POST /v1/video-trim jobs cut a 15-second hero into a hook, a demo, and a call to action, and cost $0.06 in total.

Three cuts from one master

A cart abandoner already knows the product, so the cut that fits is shorter and starts later in the story. The hook cut reminds, the demo cut answers a doubt, the CTA cut closes. Each is a start and a duration in seconds on the same source clip, 0.2 to 900 seconds long.

The three requests

import os, requests

HEADERS = {"Authorization": "Bearer " + os.environ["SUME_API_KEY"]}
SOURCE = os.environ["SUME_VIDEO_URL"]  # a media.sume.com clip
cuts = {"hook": (0, 6), "demo": (4, 6), "cta": (10, 5)}

for name, (start, duration) in cuts.items():
    resp = requests.post(
        "https://api.sume.com/v1/video-trim",
        headers={**HEADERS, "Idempotency-Key": f"retarget-{name}-001"},
        json={"video_url": SOURCE, "start": start, "duration": duration},
        timeout=30,
    )
    print(name, resp.status_code, resp.json().get("request_id"))

Captions: before or after the trim

If the master already carries burned captions, the trims carry them too, and the whole set costs $0.20 + $0.06 = $0.26. If you want a different offer line on each cut, trim a caption-free master, then run one caption job per cut: $0.06 + 3 x $0.20 = $0.66. The second route costs $0.40 more and gives each audience its own line.

A cart abandoner has usually watched part of an ad already, so the three cuts should not repeat the opening each time. The hook cut starts at zero for people who engaged with the video but never clicked. The demo cut starts at four seconds, where the product is in use, for people who added to a cart and left. The CTA cut covers the last five seconds for the nearest-to-purchase group.

Name each file by its role and audience, such as hero-hook and hero-cta, so the ad manager shows which cut served which audience. Keep the cuts short: the point of a retargeting cut is that the viewer has seen the story once, so the first second can be the product, not a logo.

Poll GET /v1/jobs/:id/status until each job is completed, then read GET /v1/jobs/:id/result for the output URL. The three jobs are independent, so run them at once rather than in sequence.

The guide also says to retarget gift card holders after the holiday, in January. The same trim trick gives you a no-offer cut for that period without rendering anything new.