TikTok Shop Affiliate: Running Open and Targeted Plans Together

Oliver Silzer spent four years at TikTok, the last two focused entirely on TikTok Shop growth and partnerships, and in this talk he shares the creator sourcing strategies he learned directly from conversations with creators themselves. His first warning: creators are getting flooded with copy-paste outreach, so generic messages are nearly invisible. His fix is genuine, personalized connection. He also argues that brands should start with creators they have already worked with on other channels, because existing relationships carry trust that new ones have to earn. That trust compounds publicly too. When creators see other creators vouching for a brand, it signals legitimacy to the whole ecosystem. Silzer also recommends running both open and targeted collaboration plans simultaneously, because many creators actively browse open plans on their own rather than waiting for brand inbound. Finally, he makes the case for working with curated TikTok Shop affiliate platforms that use proprietary technology to match sellers with the right creators and filter out the noise that open marketplaces create.

Watch to hear how he frames the testing mindset every brand needs before committing to a single sourcing strategy.