TikTok ads integrity strategy for an advertiser whose ads cannot go live

You are a product manager on TikTok's business integrity team, the group responsible for keeping the ads on the platform safe and compliant with its advertising policies. An advertiser is having a hard time getting their ads to run. What product strategy would you propose? The interviewer expects to define the problem together with you rather than hand you a precise scenario, and may ask you to commit to one specific cause before you move on to solutions and metrics. ```hint Split "trouble" before solving it An ad can fail to upload, get stuck in review, be rejected by mistake, or be rejected because it really breaks a policy. Decide which of these an integrity team owns, pick one branch to go deep on, and remember that the people who would see the ad are stakeholders too. ``` ### Clarifying Questions - Does "trouble" mean the ad fails to upload, or that it is submitted and then held in review or rejected? - If it is rejected, was that a wrong call by automated review, or does the ad genuinely break a policy, and which one (for example misleading claims, harmful content or discriminatory targeting)? - What kind of advertiser is this: a large managed account with a dedicated support contact, or a self-serve small business? - Is the goal to recover this one advertiser, or to fix the experience for every advertiser who hits the same problem? ### What a Strong Answer Covers - A clear definition of "trouble" that separates upload failures, wrongful rejections and genuine violations, with a reasoned choice of which branch to pursue - Advertiser segmentation (managed accounts versus self-serve businesses, good-faith versus repeat or deliberate violators) and a different treatment for each - Concrete changes to the ad creation, review and resubmission flow, prioritized by impact and effort - Success metrics that reward compliant ads going live, paired with guardrails on harmful ads reaching users and on wrongful rejections - Integrity-specific risks, such as how much rejection detail to reveal before bad actors use it to evade review ### Follow-up Questions - Suppose the ad is rejected because a rental-listing app aims it only at people of certain ethnicities. How does your strategy change, and should the product stop that targeting from being configured at all? - After launch, advertisers return to publish more often, but user reports about ads also rise. What do you conclude, and what do you do? - How would you tell whether an advertiser actually learned the policy when they resubmit an edited creative under a new name?