TikTok Shop Vietnam Case Study – Turning Social Views into Revenue

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Looking for one of the fastest-growing GEOs in the Asian region to super-charge your 2026 ROI? If you chose Vietnam (VN), you have a chance to hit the jackpot, especially on social commerce.

Here’s why:

• Social commerce expected to reach ~$10.21B by 2030
• Content-driven shopping is on the rise on TikTok and Facebook
• TikTok shop is the second growth generator of the Vietnamese eCommerce ecosystem, with verticals like fashion, beauty, FMCG (Fast-Moving Consumer Goods), and home.

This case study reveals efficient strategies using TikTok’s Spark and Onclick campaigns, a brand-new and very promising funnel, and “wide-test to narrow-zone” tactics from PropellerAds and their Senior Account Strategist, Karlina Berzina. 

What’s a TikTok Shop?

TikTok Shop is the platform’s built-in eCommerce feature that lets people discover, browse, and buy products straight in the app. Shoppable videos, live streams, and a dedicated Shop tab all lead to the same place (i.e., content-driven shopping): an in-app product page with price, details, and checkout in a few taps.

From Content to Store, Image Source: TikTok Shop

Now let’s zoom in on PropellerAds’ Case Study details.

What is the Campaign Overview?

The Goal of the Campaign: Finding where and on what traffic the shop gets the best buyers. 

Offers: The advertiser chose flexibility instead of a hero product based on how TikTok Shop functions in Vietnam, offering:

How you can achieve it: Evaluate zones, devices, and browsers first, then zoom in on specific product clusters.

Phase 1: Wide Test

Based on the Vietnamese social-commerce behaviour, the team launched a broad Onclick test on TikTok Shop VN based on three main principles:

1. Mobile-only: Android + iOS
2. Full-country coverage: all zones (districts/provinces), big and small, included
3. No rush in filtering: browsers, zones, and OS combinations

As the team was aiming to learn fast, they watched metrics like:

• CTR and engagement
• Conversion rate (CR) and checkout completion
• Cost per checkout (CPCO)
• Refund/return risk by zone
• Day-to-day ROI stability
  

The aim of the test: identifying zones + browsers + OS super-active buyers combos. 

The result: Chrome and Safari dominate 80% of traffic, with a smaller contribution from social/in-app browsers like Facebook; in line with the mobile usage trends from VN social-commerce, where Android Chrome and iOS Safari rule.

Phase 2: Narrowing Down on Green Zones

After roughly 7-14 days, when the first data came, the team understood the Vietnam profit zones.

Here’s their process:

1. Zone-level analysis by CTR, CVR, CPCO, refund risk, and ROI stability; deprioritizing zones with with refund risks even if they also have high sales, and whitelisting the stable ones 
2. Gathering the info and building a whitelist instead of a big campaign with generic GEO targeting
3. Custom bids per-zone campaigns only for the traffic that performs well

The result: 20-40% lower spend on low-quality zones, get less CPA swings, and scale less stressfully and more consciously.

Phase 3: Browser and Device Performance

• Chrome = volume: particularly on Android, with the most impressions and conversions
• Safari = rich even though quiet: iOS showed higher AOV and better long-term quality, even with smaller raw volume
• Social browsers (Facebook, etc.) = wildcards: good engagement but more volatility

The outcome: two dedicated campaigns for high-performing Chrome and Safari zones, plus a controlled testing-budgets campaign for Facebook browser traffic, to accurately identify whether the zone or browser is causing performance shifts. 

Bonus Experiment: Widening the Funnel 

Adding a second layer, the team ran a Social Traffic optimization test, sending mobile social traffic (Facebook, Instagram, etc.) through SmartCPM, then using zone-level data kept only the pockets that converted.

What strict rules they set:

• Mobile-only Android and iOS latest versions (filter out low-end devices and random desktop data)
• High-impact browsers only: Chrome, Safari, and Facebook browser, based on the test results
• All-social wide test with PropellerAds’ SmartCPM across multiple social-origin placements (Facebook feeds, Instagram stories/reels, and other social referrers) to see which social pockets sent users who check out, which zones worked best with social-origin traffic, and the real price floor per zone

While SmartCPM ran dynamic price discovery per zone, the team focused on reading the patterns and whitelisting the profitable micro-zones.

Short-term result: a clean cost baseline per zone, pinpointing strong micro-pockets (like a particular city + browser combo for beauty gadgets). 

Mid-term result: make scaling safer and less dependent on a single traffic type.

TikTok Shop Vs. Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, & Amazon?

What other platforms are doing:

• Instagram Shops and Checkout – discover and purchase products fully in-app; less friction and higher conversion rates
• Pinterest Shopping – browse and click through to buy from merchant sites; “mood board > product page” in one tap
• YouTube Shopping – tag products in videos and Shorts, + a shopping button/sticker that sends viewers straight to a product list or merchant store
• Amazon’s social-style feed Inspire – short-lived in-app shoppable video feed. Didn’t work because Amazon doesn’t have creator culture and algorithmic discovery, like Tik-Tok

TikTok Shop’s simplified journey goes the extra mile in Vietnam, easily switching from entertainment-first and a huge base of creators, affiliates, and influencers to selling everything from lipsticks to sneakers.

What Can You Use from This Strategy

Here are the key steps and lessons you can use:

1. First, treat diverse countries like a cluster of micro-markets, not one big GEO
2. Run intentionally wide tests with a clear plan
3. Then segment browsers and OS like they’re separate audiences
4. Combine native social-commerce strength with outside traffic to scale

Following this model, you can go beyond TikTok Shop ads and build a repeatable funnel framework: wide exploration followed by zone-level whitelisting and browser/OS segmentation, social-origin expansion, and finally, controlled scaling.

Final Thoughts

So there you have it: TikTok Shop Vietnam + PropellerAds turn data-driven, zone-based traffic strategy into a controllable performance funnel.

Just start wide, check what zones, browsers, and devices are telling you, and promote the winners to their own campaigns with custom TikTok Shop bids. 

Get started on your TikTok Shop predictable performance channel! 

Launch Your Campaign with PropellerAds

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