By: Natalie Johnson
For much of the social media era, brands have leaned on paid media as a primary engine for growth. On TikTok Shop, that logic is breaking down as creator-led discovery increasingly outperforms traditional ads. This is in large part due to the fact that creator-led discovery, where creators introduce products through their own content and communities rather than brand-controlled messaging, feels native to the app.
TikTok Shop is the platform’s in-app marketplace, designed to let users discover, evaluate, and purchase products without ever leaving the feed. “It’s built around affiliate distribution, so the brands that win are the ones that understand how to work with creators at scale,” says Kelsey Farrar, founder of SparkTok.
Farrar, who has seen this shift from every angle through his work with e-commerce brands, creators, and early-stage companies building for social commerce, sees this dynamic at the center of TikTok Shop’s rapid rise. Products are no longer introduced through polished ad units, but through creators who already speak the language of the platform and know how to earn attention. The result is content that converts because it feels earned.
The Shift From Ads to Creator-Led Discovery
TikTok Shop is fundamentally different from traditional performance channels because it blends content, commerce, and affiliate marketing into a single, native experience where transactions happen directly inside the feed. Instead of asking brands to push messages outward, it invites creators to pull products into their own narratives. The platform’s affiliate structure means creators are incentivized to produce content that drives sales, while brands gain a steady stream of authentic videos they can repurpose.
“The brands that are winning aren’t necessarily the better marketers,” he says. “They’re better at building systems around working with hundreds of creators and managing that at scale.” That includes everything from outreach and communication to product seeding and commission structures. “Brands are usually awful at making their own content,” Farrar says. “Leave it to the creators who actually live in the space, use the product, and can explain why they love it in their own voice.”
How to Identify Creators Who Actually Convert
One of the most common mistakes brands make is equating influence with follower count. On TikTok, Farrar says, discovery matters more than reach. What counts is whether a creator can consistently turn views into sales. TikTok Shop’s creator dashboard offers detailed filters, but Farrar cautions against relying solely on headline metrics like total gross merchandise value. A single viral video can mask inconsistent performance. Instead, he looks for patterns. “You want to see a history of sales, engagement rates in the five to twelve percent range, and content that clearly presents the product,” he says.
Qualitative signals matter just as much. Farrar studies comment sections to see whether audiences ask questions and show genuine interest. He reviews how clearly creators communicate and whether they have experience demonstrating similar products. “Don’t worry about followers,” he adds. “Focus on the quality of the content. TikTok will do the distribution.”
Designing Products for Impulse
Not every product is suited for TikTok Shop, and winning products are visually demonstrable and easy to understand within seconds. At the end of the day, TikTok users arrive to be entertained, not to research products. “The product needs to be impulse-friendly,” he says. “If it takes too much explanation, people won’t buy.” Beauty performs well for that reason, as results are immediately visible, but the principle applies across categories. The product should solve a clear problem, allow for competitive commissions, and be easy to seed at scale.
Product seeding, sending samples to large numbers of creators, is central to this model. “That’s how you flood the system,” Farrar says. “You get multiple creators talking about the product at once, each from their own angle.”
Scaling With Systems
Once content is live, scaling becomes a matter of refinement. Farrar groups creators into tiers: those with consistent sales, those showing potential, and those that fail to perform. Top performers are nurtured with better incentives and long-term partnerships, while inconsistent creators are tested, and underperformers are dropped. TikTok’s GMV Max further accelerates this process by using AI to boost content that already performs organically, automatically allocating ad spend to creator videos that demonstrate strong sales and engagement signals. “All you have to do is get the content,” Farrar says. “TikTok decides what to push and how much budget to put behind it based on performance.” The shift mirrors broader changes in digital advertising, where AI increasingly controls targeting and spend. According to Farrar, this reduces waste and places content in front of users who are most likely to buy, without brands manually selecting audiences.
Authenticity Will Matter Even More
Looking ahead, Farrar expects AI to play a growing role in optimization, but he is skeptical of fully synthetic influence. “There’s an ethical question around AI creators pretending to be real people,” he says. Transparency, he believes, will define the next phase of social commerce. He also anticipates a counterreaction. As AI-generated content becomes more common, audiences may gravitate toward real creators who speak from experience. “I think there’s going to be a thirst for legitimate creators who are creating original content from the heart,” Farrar says.
Influencer-led TikTok Shops outperform ads because they align with how people discover products now. The brands that succeed will be those that build trust through creators, supported by systems that scale authenticity rather than replace it.
Follow Kelsey Farrar on LinkedIn or visit his website for more insights.
