How to Cancel a Promotion on TikTok

So, you’ve hit Promote on a TikTok video, but now you need to stop it. Maybe the ad isn't performing as you’d hoped, you spotted a typo, or you just need to reallocate that budget to a different video that's taking off organically. Whatever the reason, you need to pull the plug, and you need to do it fast. This guide will walk you through exactly how to cancel a promotion on TikTok, covering both the simple in-app Promote feature and the more complex TikTok Ads Manager.

Why You Might Need to Cancel a TikTok Promotion

Hitting the brakes on a paid campaign is a normal part of digital marketing. It’s not a failure, it’s a strategic decision. Brands, creators, and marketers stop promotions all the time for perfectly good reasons. Here are a few common scenarios:

• Underperformance: The most common reason. If your promotion isn't delivering the views, clicks, or conversions you expected, it’s better to cut your losses and stop spending money on a campaign that isn’t working.
• Budget Burn: Sometimes, an ad spends its budget much faster than anticipated without yielding proportional results. Turning it off allows you to regain control of your spend.
• Creative Mistakes: Did you notice a glaring typo in your caption the second after you launched? Or maybe the link in your bio points to the wrong page. Pulling the ad lets you fix these mistakes before more people see them.
• Business Changes: A product you were promoting might have just sold out, or a special offer's end date might have changed. It makes no sense to keep running an ad for something that's no longer available or relevant.
• A Better Opportunity: You might have another video that’s blowing up organically. It’s often smarter to cancel a weaker promotion and shift that budget to boost your organic winner, amplifying its momentum.

Canceling an ad is simply an optimization tactic. The goal is to spend your marketing budget as effectively as possible, and sometimes that means stopping what isn't working to make room for what will.

"Promote" vs. TikTok Ads Manager: Know the Difference

Before proceeding, it's important to understand how you launched your promotion, as the cancellation process is different for each method. TikTok offers two ways to run paid ads:

1. The In-App "Promote" Feature

This is the quick and easy method for boosting a specific video directly from your TikTok profile. You tap a button, choose a goal (like more views or profile visits), set a budget and duration, and you’re off. This option is designed for creators and small businesses who want a simple way to give a video a little extra reach without leaving the app.

2. TikTok Ads Manager

This is the full-featured, professional advertising platform accessed via a desktop browser. It allows you to build multi-layered campaigns with detailed audience targeting, multiple ad formats (not just boosting an existing post), custom bidding strategies, and in-depth analytics. If you've ever set up a "Campaign," "Ad Group," and "Ad," you’re using Ads Manager.

Knowing which one you used is the first step. If you did everything on your phone by tapping "Promote" on a specific video, follow the in-app instructions below. If you built your campaign on a computer through the ads.tiktok.com dashboard, skip ahead to the Ads Manager instructions.

How to Cancel a Promotion Using the "Promote" Feature (In-App)

Stopping a promotion you started inside the TikTok app is a quick process. Here’s a step-by-step guide to get it done in under a minute.

1. Open TikTok and go to your profile. Tap the "Profile" icon in the bottom-right corner of your screen.
2. Find the video you are promoting. Promotions can take a while to get reviewed and start running, so you may need to scroll a little. Your active promoted video will often have a small indicator or you'll know which one it is.
3. Access your video's settings. Tap the three horizontal dots (...) on the right-hand side of the screen on your video.
4. Tap on the 'Promote' icon. Even though the video is already active within the Promotion feature, that's still the home base. You should now see an "In Progress" type of tag to confirm your active promotion in the new window.
6. Turn off the promotion. On the promotion details screen, you'll see a summary of your campaign’s performance and settings. At the bottom of this screen, there should be an option that says “Turn off promotion.” Tap it.
7. Confirm your choice. TikTok will show a pop-up asking you to confirm that you want to stop the promotion. Tap "Turn off" again to finalize the cancellation.

What Happens to My Money?

This is the most common follow-up question. When you cancel a promotion, you will only be charged for the results received up to that point. For example, if you set a budget of $50 but only spent $15 before turning it off, you will only be charged $15. Any pre-authorized hold on your card for the full amount will be adjusted to reflect the actual spend. You won’t get a "refund" in the traditional sense, because the money for the full promotion was never actually taken - you just stop spending the remainder of the budget.

How to Stop an Ad Campaign in TikTok Ads Manager (Desktop)

If you're running more advanced campaigns through the desktop dashboard, you have more granular control. You can turn off an entire campaign, a specific ad group within that campaign, or just a single ad. The most common action is to turn off an ad group.

1. Log in to TikTok Ads Manager. Go to ads.tiktok.com and sign in to your account.
2. Find your campaign page. Once you're in the dashboard, click on the “Campaign” tab at the top of the page. This will show you a list of all your campaigns.
3. Find the campaign/ad group/ad you want to stop. You can see your campaigns here. You can click on a campaign name to view the ad groups within it, or click an ad group to view the specific ads.
4. Use the toggle switch. To the left of each campaign, ad group, or ad name, there is a blue toggle switch. If it is blue and switched to the right, it is On. To turn it off, simply click the switch. It will turn gray and move to the left, indicating it is now Off.

The change is almost immediate. Your ad will stop being delivered to users within minutes, preventing any further charges.

Should I Pause or Delete My Ad?

In Ads Manager, you have the option to either turn off an ad (effectively pausing it) or delete it entirely. It’s almost always better to just turn it off. Here’s why:

• Pausing keeps your data. Turning off an ad preserves all of its performance data - impressions, clicks, spend, etc. This is very useful for future analysis. You can see what worked and what didn't, helping you make smarter decisions later.
• Deleting removes data permanently. If you delete a campaign or ad, all its performance history is gone forever. This is generally a bad idea unless you are absolutely sure you never want to reference that particular campaign again (for example, if it was just a test).

When in doubt, use the toggle switch to turn it off. You can always turn it back on later or clone it to start a new, improved version.

After Canceling Your Promotion: Your Next Steps

Turning off an underperforming ad is just the first step. The more important part is learning from it to make your next campaign even better. Here's a quick checklist of what to do next:

1. Analyze the Performance Data

Even though the ad didn't meet your goals, its data still tells a story. Look at the metrics you have available:

• View-through Rate (VTR): Did people scroll past your video immediately? Maybe the first three seconds didn't grab their attention.
• Click-through Rate (CTR): If people watched but didn't click your link, maybe your call-to-action (CTA) wasn't clear or compelling enough.
• Comments & Engagement: What did people say in the comments? Their feedback can be brutally honest and incredibly useful for understanding how your message was received.

2. Form a Hypothesis

Based on the data, try to figure out why it didn't work. Was it the creative itself? The caption? The audience targeting? The offer? Come up with a clear theory. For example, "I think my ad failed because the hook was too slow, and I targeted too broad of an audience."

3. Test and Iterate

Don't just give up. Use what you learned to launch a new, smarter promotion. You can try:

• New Creative: Tweak the video's first few seconds or create an altogether new version.
• New Copy: Write a different caption or a stronger CTA.
• New Targeting: Narrow your audience or try a completely different interest group.

Marketing is a process of continuous improvement. Every canceled ad is just one data point on your way to finding a winning formula.

Final Thoughts

Canceling a TikTok promotion, whether through the in-app "Promote" button or the detailed Ads Manager, is a simple task once you know where to look. By turning off campaigns that aren't working, you can protect your budget and gather valuable data to optimize your future advertising efforts.

Once you’ve got your paid ad strategy dialed in, the real work of managing your day-to-day organic content begins. We've found that wrestling with complicated social media tools can be just as frustrating as an ad that doesn't perform. That’s why we built Postbase - to streamline everything else for modern social media. With features like a visual content calendar for all platforms, reliable video scheduling, and a unified inbox for comments and DMs, our goal is to help you spend less time managing software and more time creating content that really connects.