Question 1

What can a Redshift model push into TikTok Ads?

Accepted Answer

Custom audiences and offline conversion events. For audiences, each row the model returns becomes a member, matched on email or phone number. For conversions, you can report events that happened away from TikTok, which is how the platform learns about a sale completed in your billing system. Both run off ordinary Redshift models, so one table can drive targeting and measurement.

Question 2

What TikTok audience limits should I design around?

Accepted Answer

Three. TikTok documents and enforces a minimum of 1,000 members before an audience is usable, so plan around that rather than the smaller sizes the API has accepted in testing. Membership processing carries a 48 hour service level, so a freshly created audience is not immediately targetable. And an advertiser is capped at 400 audiences, which matters if you were planning a segment per campaign.

Question 3

Are identifiers hashed before they leave Redshift?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Email addresses and phone numbers are hashed by Polytomic before transmission rather than being sent raw for TikTok to hash on arrival. Plaintext columns in your model are fine since they get hashed on the way out, and values you have already hashed generally pass through as they are. So the audience can be built from ordinary columns without raw personal data travelling in the clear.

Question 4

What happens to people who no longer qualify?

Accepted Answer

Nothing, unless you make it happen. Add mode is add only and there is an explicit remove mode, but TikTok does not expose a mirror mode here that reconciles membership against your model automatically, which Microsoft and Meta both do. So a shrinking audience needs a second model listing who should come out, run as a remove sync alongside the add one. Worth deciding before you build, since it is two syncs rather than one.

Question 5

How often should a TikTok audience be refreshed?

Accepted Answer

Daily is usually plenty, and there is a specific reason not to go faster. The 48 hour processing service level means membership changes are not instant on TikTok's side anyway, so an hourly reverse ETL run spends real cluster resources producing updates the platform will not act on quickly. Match the schedule to how fast the platform can use the data rather than to how fast the sync could run.

Sync Redshift to TikTok Ads

Sync Redshift to TikTok Ads with Polytomic

Email and phone hashed

Real limits to design around

Offline conversions too

Or sync TikTok Ads to Redshift

Trusted by businesses worldwide

Step-by-step integration guide

Connect Redshift in Polytomic

Connect TikTok Ads in Polytomic

Create a sync between Redshift and TikTok Ads

Map fields and enable the sync

Frequently asked questions

The sync and ETL platform that does it all

Powerful data sync

Advanced analytics

Enterprise security

Easy setup

Ready to connect Redshift with TikTok Ads?