From Scroll to Sale: Exploring the Impact of Interaction Type and Device Price on TikTok Advertisements

2026-09-30

AI Summary

This study investigates the dynamic influence of user interactions and device price on ad delivery frequency and content within TikTok’s advertising recommendation system. By deploying 56 automated accounts to audit information feeds, the authors collected over 80,000 video records. Device price is innovatively introduced as a proxy variable for income, and statistical methods are employed to systematically evaluate the differential effects of multiple factors on algorithmic ad allocation. Results indicate that liking and sharing significantly increase ad load, whereas high-priced devices receive fewer advertisements, and low-priced devices are disproportionately targeted with discount-oriented content. These findings reveal platform-level ad stratification strategies driven by both user behavioral signals and inferred economic attributes.

Abstract

Companies and brands increasingly use dynamic pricing, including targeting social media ads to users based on their income. In this work we audit TikTok's feed using 56 automated accounts, which collect data on over 80,000 videos, across two studies. We test the impact of device price on ad load and ad types, using 12 phones of low ($0-$250), medium ($400-$650), and high ($750-$1,000+) price as a proxy for income. We also test the impact of interaction type (i.e., like, comment, share), age, and gender on the frequency and content of ads. Overall, the ad load was 29.4%, but liking and sharing content increased ad load significantly. We also found that as accounts spend more time on TikTok, the ad load steadily increases. We found some evidence that device price impacts both ad load and content -- more expensive devices were targeted with fewer ads, while the least expensive devices received more discounts.

Problem

• TikTok advertising
• dynamic pricing
• ad load
• device price
• user interaction

Innovation

• Automated Auditing
• Dynamic Pricing
• Proxy Variable
• Social Media Ads
• Interaction Type