Capturing the Moment: How Pulse Suite puts your brand at the center of the cultural conversation

Over a billion people around the world turn to TikTok to connect with the emerging and legacy voices they've come to know, love, and trust. This is especially true during the year’s biggest cultural moments, from the holidays to major sports championships, when TikTok becomes the go-to second screen people turn to during commercial breaks and other key moments in a broadcast. During last year’s Big Game, TikTok saw nearly 2× growth in active users compared to the same time the week before [1]. Engagement peaked after the halftime show and consistently spiked when the action paused and TV commercial breaks began.

And it’s not just sports that bring people to TikTok. The holidays and seasonal sales are another opportunity for brands to connect with audiences as they explore what’s trending and plan for the season ahead. In fact, 76% of social and video platform users say TikTok is the platform they’re most likely to visit to discover and learn about new and emerging cultural trends, ranking it #1 among other platforms [2].

What does this mean for brands? When attention is at its peak, TikTok offers an opportunity to reach new audiences when they’re highly engaged. With Pulse Suite and other high-impact ad formats, brands can make the most of these moments to capture attention, stand out, and stay top of mind.

What is the TikTok Pulse suite?

There are four types of Pulse offerings that allow you to expand your audiences through differentiated contextual environments: Pulse Premiere, Pulse Core, Pulse Mentions, and Pulse Tastemakers.

Pulse Premiere

Pulse Premiere gives advertisers the opportunity to place their ads next to the most relevant and suitable premium content from top publishers across sports, entertainment, and lifestyle. Premiere publishers are available for targeting during specific tentpole events, to show up around official content about the moment or event, or for an always-on presence throughout the year.

Our Premiere partners now include a range of publishers, including NBCUniversal, Condé Nast, Paramount, Warner Bros. Discovery, Formula 1, Red Bull Media, BuzzFeed, Disney, People Inc., Hearst, MLS, NFL, NHL® , and Vox.

Pulse Core

Pulse Core places brands next to the top 4% of trending, brand-safe user-generated content, as identified by the Pulse Score across preset categories or customized lineups tailored to your campaign's needs. On average, Pulse Core campaigns are 100+ times more likely to appear adjacent to trending topics than other campaign types during the same time period. [3]

Pulse Core reinforces brand credibility through contextual placement. According to a recent Kantar report, Pulse Core delivers a 50% stronger overall brand impact (MDS Power Score) versus standard In‑Feed Ads and the highest instinctive "Trustworthy" scores among TikTok's high-impact formats.⁴

Max Pulse: ads placed next to a run of Pulse Core content across all categories, in addition to the pre-built selections, for maximum available reach.

Category Lineups: pre-built lineups of Pulse Core content across a variety of categories (Beauty & Personal Care Pulse, Sports & Recreation Pulse, etc.) that enable brands to build brand association with a specific content genre and benefit from contextual priming.

Seasonal Lineups: pre-built lineups of Pulse Core content around key seasonal or cultural moments such as Thanksgiving and the Holiday Season, allowing for maximized relevance and affinity.

Custom Lineups: bespoke lineups of TikTok's top trending, brand-suitable content, curated with the help of Generative AI to fit your specific marketing needs. Custom Lineups are now available in Canada.

Pulse Core also includes View+, a feature that allows advertisers to optimize for 6-second view-through rates on Max Pulse and Category Lineup campaigns.

Pulse Mentions

Pulse Mentions places you next to the exact moments when people are actively talking about your brand and category, allowing you to shape high-intent conversations as they happen. Pulse Mentions is now available to US-based advertisers and will be available to select Canada-based advertisers in Q2 2026.

Pulse Tastemakers

Pulse Tastemakers lets you place your ads immediately after videos from a hand-selected group of creators. The new solution is designed to build strong brand associations and tap into the power of creators to win over new audiences. Pulse Tastemakers will be available to select US-based advertisers in Q2 2026.

How Pulse amplifies impact across your media mix

While each TikTok Pulse solution delivers powerful results on its own, adding Pulse to your broader media mix makes your advertising dollars go even further.

Pulse strengthens contextual alignment within your overall strategy and, when paired with high-impact and performance formats, expands both reach and effectiveness.

According to our analysis, each 1% allocation of advertisers' total budget to TikTok Pulse delivers 2.4% exclusive reach in addition to their other ad placements. [5]

Ready to make your brand part of the moments everyone’s talking about?

See how Pulse Suite and other high-impact ad formats can help.

This document is the property of TikTok and is intended solely for informational purposes. The recipient shall not distribute, exhibit or otherwise use this document for any other purpose. TikTok undertakes no obligation or responsibility to update any of the information contained in this document. Past performance does not guarantee or predict future performance. Results may vary.