Growth Max Mini Dramas needs 10 video creatives: cut them for $2.20

TikTok's help page for setting up Growth Max: Mini Dramas says a campaign needs at least 10 creatives and that only the video format is supported. If you already have one episode, you can cut ten 15-second hook variants with Sume's video trim at $0.02 each ($0.20) and burn captions on each at $0.20 per clip ($2.00), for $2.20 in total.

The requirements below come from TikTok Ads Help. That page does not state episode length, resolution, or any rule about AI content, so this post does not invent them.

What the TikTok page does say

The page lists the campaign objective (TikTok Native Growth), the optimization location (Mini Dramas or Drama Series), and bidding choices (Target ROAS or Highest Value). It also says the mini drama must be added to Business Center first and that the drama URL must open in the Destination section.

For creative, the two rules that matter are the 10-creative minimum and video only.

Ten cuts from one master

Video trim takes one clip you have already imported to media.sume.com, a start, and one of end or duration (0.2 to 900 seconds). It returns a new MP4 and leaves the source alone. The rate is $0.02 per job and it uses only ffmpeg, no model inference. Use precision: exact (the default) so each cut starts on the frame you chose.

Pick ten different hook moments from the episode: the slap, the reveal, the door opening. Each trim is a different opening, which is the point of a 10-creative minimum.

curl -X POST https://api.sume.com/v1/video-trim \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SUME_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "Idempotency-Key: gm-hook-03" \
  -d '{
    "video_url": "https://media.sume.com/artifacts/artf_demo/episode1.mp4",
    "start": 41.5,
    "duration": 15
  }'

Burn captions, then check the files

Run each trimmed file through Video captions ($0.20 per job for clips up to 60 seconds). If a cut has no speech, the job fails with caption_no_speech, so send cues for those.

Before upload, run Video inspect with frames: false to read the probe, since TikTok's page leaves video specs to its other documents. Poll every job with GET /v1/jobs/{id}/status; see Jobs and results.

Make ten that differ

Ten near-identical cuts defeat the purpose of a 10-creative minimum. Vary the hook line, the first shot, and the length of the opening, and keep the story the same, since the campaign promotes the same drama.

Name each creative by its hook so you can see which ones the campaign favors. Keep your own spreadsheet of hook, trim start, trim end, and job id. Then watch results by creative and replace the weakest few with new hooks, not new copies of the winners.

Remember that the Ads Help page states video only and says nothing about an AI policy for ad creatives, so check the ads policy pages for your market before you run AI-generated footage.