Smart+ Recommended Creatives: web only, so who makes app ads?

No: TikTok's Symphony automation post says Recommended Creatives is currently available only for Smart+ web campaigns, so an app-install or lead campaign has to bring its own videos. For those, Sume can generate the clips, but you upload them to Ads Manager yourself.

This matters because the Smart+ upgrade covers four objectives: Traffic, Sales, Lead Generation and App Promotion. The AI creative helper does not follow all four, and a team that assumes it does will launch app campaigns with an empty asset group.

What does Recommended Creatives actually do?

According to the Symphony automation post, the tool "uses your campaign destination URL to instantly generate a mix of new and existing video assets", with scripts, voiceovers and virtual avatars. It can also refresh a running campaign with new creatives during delivery to fight creative fatigue. TikTok cites one advertiser with a 70% drop in cost per acquisition against a control campaign, and adds that past performance does not guarantee future performance.

Read that as a vendor-reported case, not a benchmark you should plan around. The mechanism is the useful part: the input is a landing page, so the output is only as good as what that page shows.

Which Smart+ campaigns need your own creative?

Anything that is not a web destination. The table sets out what TikTok's pages say and what to prepare.

How would you fill an app campaign with Sume?

Start from the one thing Recommended Creatives uses and an app campaign lacks: a page to read. Write the script yourself from the store listing, then generate. A presenter clip uses the avatar video endpoint, which accepts scripts that Sume estimates at 4 to 60 seconds and defaults to 9:16 at 720p. For an app demo, pass a scene of type photo with a screenshot URL, or use the Image API to make a styled key visual first. Media fields must be public HTTPS URLs.

Use the video generation catalog for non-presenter clips. The docs show an example model entry with 9:16 among its aspect ratios, but each model lists its own, so call GET /v1/videos/models and read supported_aspect_ratios and supported_durations first.

curl -X POST https://api.sume.com/v1/avatar-1.0/talking-video \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SUME_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "Idempotency-Key: app-install-hook-1" \
  -d '{
    "avatar_handle": "my-presenter",
    "script": "Tired of juggling five apps? This one does it in a tap.",
    "scene": { "type": "photo", "image_url": "https://media.sume.com/artifacts/artf_demo/app-screen.png" }
  }'

How should you review what TikTok generates for a web campaign?

Even where Recommended Creatives is available, treat its output as a first draft. It reads your destination URL, so a page with an old price, a retired product or a claim you no longer make will carry that into scripts and voiceovers. Open the generated assets before launch and remove anything that does not match the live page today.

Then compare them with your own best-performing hook. The tool can mix new and existing video assets, so you keep control of the opening seconds by uploading your own variants beside the generated ones. Smart+ reports performance per creative, which tells you which source is earning its slot after delivery starts. Keep your own clips named by angle so the report maps back to a file you can regenerate or edit.

TikTok says the tool can auto-refresh a campaign with new creatives during delivery. For web campaigns that is convenient. For app and lead campaigns you refresh by hand, so build a small backlog in advance: three to five new hooks queued as scripts, ready to render when frequency climbs or results flatten. Because Sume jobs are asynchronous, queue the renders together, collect the finished files through a webhook or by polling the job, and upload them in one pass.

One more constraint to plan around: TikTok's page describes the helper as generating scripts, voiceovers and virtual avatars. Sume's avatar videos come from avatars you create and own the rights to, so a Sume clip will not look like a TikTok-generated avatar. If you mix both in one asset group, label your tests so you can tell the sources apart.

What should you check before you upload?

Confirm the clip matches what the app does. TikTok's own creative tools generate from your page, so they inherit its claims; a clip you script yourself inherits yours. Sume does not review ad claims.

Check TikTok's AI-generated content labeling for ads before launch. The linked posts summarize the reported rules, but the Ads Manager flow decides what you must tick.