Instagram ads suit most local businesses as a first choice: Instagram takes both image and video ads, accepts small daily budgets, and runs in Adwave from the $30/day minimum. TikTok ads fit when your customers skew younger and you can keep producing short vertical video. In Adwave, TikTok is live and opt-in from about $91/day.
How we compared TikTok and Instagram ads
Adwave runs ads on both Instagram and TikTok, so we have an interest in this comparison. This article does not rank Adwave against anyone. It compares the two platforms on the same six criteria: audience, ad formats, creative effort and cost, targeting, and measurement.
Platform budget rules come from each company’s documentation: TikTok’s from its own ad budget help pages, and Meta’s as summarized in an October 2026 review of Meta’s minimum budget rules. Cost per click and cost per thousand impressions (CPM) figures are third-party estimates. Each one is dated below, and none of them is a quote of what you will pay. Adwave’s terms come from the Adwave pricing page as of November 2026. If you’re weighing other channels, we keep more advertising platform comparisons in one place.
Side-by-side comparison
| TikTok ads | Instagram ads | |
|---|---|---|
| Audience | Skews younger; used by 37% of US adults (Pew, March 2026) | Broader age range |
| Main formats | In-Feed video, TopView | Photo, video, carousel, collection, Stories, Explore, Reels, shopping |
| Creative needs | Needs a steady supply of fresh, native-feeling vertical video | Image ads can work; vertical video with sound helps on Reels |
| Published minimum budget | $50/day per campaign, $20/day per ad group (2026) | No fixed figure; varies by country and objective (Meta Help Center, October 2026) |
| Typical CPM | About $5 to $12 (Admetrics, May 2026) | $6.25 to $7.68 by placement (Influee, 2026) |
| Typical CPC | About $0.30 to $1.50 (Admetrics, May 2026) | $0.40 to $1.73 (Cropink, June 2026) |
| In Adwave (November 2026) | Live and opt-in from about $91/day; turn it on in Customize and connect your TikTok account | Included from the $30/day minimum |
Who you reach on each platform
TikTok reaches a younger audience than Instagram, which is broader in age. Pew Research puts TikTok use at 37% of US adults as of March 2026, a figure reported in Poster.ly’s TikTok stats guide. For a current platform-by-platform view of who uses Instagram and TikTok by age, see Pew’s October 2026 social media fact sheet. That survey ran from January 30 to June 18, 2026.
For a local business, start from who actually buys. A roofer or a dental practice whose customers are mostly in their 40s and up will usually find more of them on Instagram, along with Facebook, which shares the same Meta ad system. A bubble tea shop or a gym chasing college-age members has a stronger case for TikTok. Neither platform works only for one age group. The difference is in where your budget goes furthest. Our guide to Instagram advertising for local businesses goes deeper on the Instagram side.
Ad formats and creative needs
Instagram is the more forgiving platform if you don’t have much video. It accepts photo, video, carousel, collection, Stories, Explore, Reels and shopping ads. A good photo of a finished kitchen remodel or a plated special can carry an ad there. Copy also does more work on Instagram: a headline and a few lines of text get read.
TikTok is built around video. Its two common ad types are In-Feed ads, which play between regular videos, and TopView ads, which appear when someone opens the app. Viewers tend to skip anything that looks like a traditional commercial and respond better to clips that look like regular user posts. Most people won’t read the caption, so the offer has to land inside a short video. TikTok also wears out creative quickly, so you need new clips on an ongoing basis.
The two platforms are closer on video than they used to be, because Instagram pushes Reels hard. Meta tested this directly: across 15 split tests, 9:16 Reels video with sound cut cost per result by 34.5% against a still image, according to Influee’s report of the test. A business that films short vertical clips for Instagram Reels has most of what TikTok needs. If you’re new to the format, start with getting started with Instagram Reels.
What each platform costs in 2026
Treat every number in this section as a planning estimate. Your costs depend on your objective, how narrow your audience is, your market, and how well your ads perform.
For TikTok, Admetrics’ May 2026 TikTok pricing guide estimates about $5 to $12 per thousand impressions and $0.30 to $1.50 per click. For Instagram, Influee puts CPM at $6.25 to $7.68 depending on placement. Cropink’s June 2026 Instagram cost breakdown puts cost per click at $0.40 to $1.73. On those estimates, the two platforms overlap heavily, and the cheaper one for you will depend on your creative.
The minimum budgets differ more. TikTok enforces a $50 campaign floor and $20 ad group floor on its self-serve platform in 2026. Meta no longer publishes one fixed minimum. Its Help Center says the floor depends on country and objective, plus budget type and bid strategy. Ads Manager warns you when an ad set falls below it.
Those minimums keep an ad running, but they don’t tell you what a useful test costs. TikTok says performance settles after about 25 results. A Darkroom analysis of TikTok costs found that at the average 2025 cost per result, a $20/day ad group needs about 41 days to reach that point. Meta’s rules point the same way: with a cost-per-result goal, the daily budget should be at least 5 times the goal. Plan for a budget that can produce enough results to judge, then decide how much to spend on social ads from there.
Targeting and measurement for a local business
Both platforms let you target by location and age, plus interests. For a local business, the useful setting is a tight service area. In Adwave you can set a radius, ZIP codes or a city for the whole campaign, so Instagram and TikTok both reach the same neighborhood; see how targeting works in Adwave.
Measurement is harder. Both platforms offer a tracking pixel you install on your website. TikTok’s attribution windows are more limited, so it can under-report sales that happen days after someone sees an ad. Each platform’s own report also tends to give that platform the credit. Adwave’s conversion tracking and attribution options include last-touch credit and assisted conversions, plus Lift experiments that compare exposed and unexposed groups. None of these settles attribution perfectly, but together they give a fuller picture than one platform’s dashboard. People who saw a TikTok or Reel and didn’t click can be reached again with retargeting ads for small businesses.
When each platform fits
Instagram fits when your offer photographs well, your customers are older or mixed in age, or your total daily budget is under about $91. Images can carry an Instagram campaign, and Meta lets you start small. That makes Instagram the lower-risk first channel for most local businesses.
TikTok fits when your audience skews younger, someone on your team can film new clips every week, and your budget can run long enough to collect real results. It’s a poor fit if you can only supply a handful of polished photos. Posting organically first is a cheap way to learn what your audience watches, and our guide to organic TikTok for local businesses covers that.
Two examples show how this plays out. They are examples, not customer results.
For example, a neighborhood restaurant promotes a weeknight family special. On Instagram it runs a feed photo of the dish plus a short Reel of the kitchen. On TikTok it runs a casual clip of the cook plating the special. Both point to the reservation page, and the next step is to compare bookings after a few weeks.
For example, a hair salon targets new clients aged 18 to 30 with a first-visit discount. TikTok carries before-and-after clips filmed on a phone, while Instagram Stories show the same transformations with a booking link. The next step is to film fresh clips every week and pause whichever versions stop getting bookings.
Running both from one Adwave budget
If you want both platforms without managing two ad systems, here is how it works in Adwave:
- Paste your website. Adwave reads your offers and photos and makes the ads, including vertical social video. Our guide to creating ads from your website URL shows what that looks like.
- Review and edit your ads and audience before adding a card. You can also upload finished ads.
- Set one prepaid daily budget from $30 to $10,000, with no subscription or contract. Facebook and Instagram are included from $30/day.
- To add TikTok, set a budget of about $91/day or more, turn TikTok on in Customize and connect your TikTok account. You don’t open separate ad accounts for the other channels.
- Add funds and launch. If a channel can’t run at launch because of budget, audience or content eligibility, Adwave launches the rest of the campaign and tells you why.
Campaign creative is included in Adwave. Extra social videos cost $6 each, and card deposits add a processing fee shown at checkout (ACH deposits have no added fee). You can check what ad creation includes before ordering anything paid.
