TikTok or Reels? We Spent $10K to Test Which Drives More Sales

Short-form video is no longer an optional content format; it has become the heartbeat of modern digital marketing. With TikTok and Instagram Reels both dominating user attention, brands face a crucial decision: where should content budgets go when the goal is driving actual sales, not just reach?

To uncover which platform delivers better performance for conversion-driven campaigns, a series of paid and organic content experiments were run across both channels—totaling a media spend of $10,000. The results offer useful insights for marketers, brand managers, and founders who need more than engagement metrics to justify spend.

TikTok vs Reels: Platform Dynamics

The algorithmic DNA of TikTok and Instagram Reels differs fundamentally, affecting how content is distributed and consumed. TikTok's "For You" page is designed to surface interest-based content regardless of the creator's follower count. Reels, on the other hand, continues to prioritize network effects, making engagement metrics more dependent on existing audience size and interaction history.

While both platforms offer immersive short-form formats, TikTok excels at early discovery. Brands launching new products or aiming for rapid top-of-funnel attention often see more traction here. Instagram Reels, however, may outperform in middle-of-funnel nurturing, especially when paired with branded Stories and carousels.

Campaign Setup: Controlled Spend, Varied Objectives

To ensure comparability, the $10,000 budget was split equally between TikTok and Instagram Reels. Each platform received $5,000 allocated across:

• Paid ads using identical product demo videos

• Organic posts scheduled at peak engagement hours

• Influencer collaborations (one macro and one micro influencer per channel)

The campaigns promoted the same product—a consumer wellness brand’s minimalist air diffuser kit—with clear attribution tracking across landing pages and discount codes.

Key Metrics Tracked

Success was evaluated using five conversion-oriented KPIs:

1. Click-through rate (CTR)

2. Average view duration

3. Cost per acquisition (CPA)

4. Landing page conversion rate

5. Repeat purchase indicator

All campaigns ran for 14 days and leveraged native ad managers to ensure platform algorithm compliance.

Performance Highlights

Click-Through Rate: TikTok ads consistently outperformed Reels on CTR, averaging 2.74 percent versus 1.96 percent on Instagram. This aligns with global benchmarks from Influencer Marketing Hub, which found that TikTok content often elicits quicker user action due to its direct call-to-content loop.

View Duration: TikTok again led with an average of 18.3 seconds compared to Reels’ 12.7 seconds. However, Reels users showed slightly more engagement with post-click experiences, such as tapping through multi-product pages.

Cost Per Acquisition: Here, Reels came ahead with an average CPA of $19.84, compared to TikTok’s $24.51. While TikTok attracted more clicks, Instagram's targeting resulted in higher purchase intent.

Landing Page Conversion Rate: Reels visitors converted at 7.1 percent versus TikTok’s 5.3 percent, highlighting the value of more qualified, intent-based traffic on Meta platforms.

Repeat Purchase Potential: While hard to measure in a short time window, post-purchase email engagement and coupon redemption favored Reels, suggesting stronger retention signals.

Platform Strengths by Funnel Stage

Findings suggest that TikTok dominates in top-of-funnel exposure, especially for new brands or products without an established audience. The viral architecture rewards curiosity, fast pacing, and native storytelling. For brands optimizing for reach, creative testing, and A/B hooks, TikTok is a clear fit.

Instagram Reels shows strength further down the funnel. Its integration with product tags, shopping tabs, and Stories makes it more suitable for retargeting and checkout-driven experiences. Reels also benefits from Meta’s mature ad infrastructure, enabling more granular control over conversion-focused campaigns.

Influencer ROI Comparison

Macro influencer campaigns on TikTok produced higher impressions but lower conversion rates compared to Instagram. On the micro level, influencers with under 50,000 followers drove similar traffic volumes on both platforms, but Instagram leads in attributed revenue. This matches recent findings from HubSpot’s State of Marketing report, which emphasizes the maturing monetization behavior of Instagram audiences.

Creative Format Breakdown

On both platforms, short videos under 30 seconds outperformed longer ones, particularly when incorporating:

• UGC-style visuals

• Native subtitles

• Voiceover hooks within first 3 seconds

Branded content that felt overly polished underperformed on TikTok. On Instagram, carousel-linked Reels outperformed standalone video by 18 percent in click-through.

Attribution Insights

All traffic was tagged with UTM parameters tied to Google Analytics, providing a clear view of user journey behaviors. Interestingly, while TikTok generated more traffic, bounce rates were higher (average 52 percent) than Instagram’s (36 percent). This reinforces the hypothesis that TikTok excels at spark, while Reels nurtures depth.

Heatmaps from the product landing page also showed Reels users spent more time reading product details, while TikTok traffic focused on pricing and video embeds.

What This Means for Marketers

Channel strategy should not rely on assumptions about platform popularity. Sales-driven campaigns require tailoring content to match the audience behaviors specific to each app. For instance, creative that performs well on TikTok may need repositioning on Instagram to align with a slower, more aesthetic scroll culture.

This is especially relevant for brands with limited ad budgets. Allocating funds based on funnel stage—TikTok for awareness, Instagram for conversion—can maximize return without overspending.

To support campaigns at scale, tools like Marketing & Branding Mastery provide frameworks for content testing, segmentation, and channel-specific optimization.

Brands that succeed are those who treat content as modular assets, rather than one-size-fits-all deployments.

Final Insight

While TikTok drove more top-line traffic and awareness, Instagram Reels edged ahead in bottom-line revenue per dollar spent. The decision is not either/or, but how both platforms can support different parts of the sales funnel. For creative brands seeking both cultural reach and transactional return, aligning each platform’s strengths to your funnel architecture is the real performance advantage.

Explore how Ukiyo Productions helps creative businesses build smarter content systems across social channels at ukiyoprod.com/pages/services.