TikTok TopView in Azerbaijan: How Baku Electronics Launched First and What the Numbers Showed

When TikTok made TopView available in Azerbaijan, one brand didn't wait to see how the market would respond. Baku Electronics went live in the first available time slots — before any other advertiser in the country.

TopView can only be launched through official TikTok resellers. Evido by Aitarget is an official TikTok partner — and we secured those first slots for our client from day one.

In this article, we break down what TopView is and what it delivers for awareness campaigns. Also we share a firsthand account of how the launch played out for Baku Electronics.

What TopView actually is

TopView is TikTok's most premium ad format. It plays the moment a user opens the app — before any organic content, before any other ad. The first 3 seconds run as a full-screen takeover with no interface elements. After that, the video continues in-feed format, up to 60 seconds total, with likes, comments, shares, and clickable destinations available.

The placement is exclusive by design. Only one brand occupies TopView per day per market. Impressions are purchased in advance on a CPM basis and are fully guaranteed — you book a specific volume. Inventory is sold on a first-come, first-served basis, and for full-day campaigns TikTok recommends booking at least 60 days out.

Access is not available through self-serve Ads Manager. TopView requires going through an official TikTok sales representative or a certified reseller.

"The user encounters the brand full-screen, with sound, within the first second of opening the app. This minimises the chance of ad blindness. In terms of capturing attention in those first seconds, we rate TopView's effectiveness very highly."

— Baku Electronics

The campaign: what Baku Electronics needed from it

Red Saturday is one of Baku Electronics' largest and most strategically important campaigns of the year. The brief was clear: create maximum noise in the market, achieve high visibility in a short window, and drive mass brand awareness.

"We wanted every potential customer entering the digital space that day to know about Red Saturday. One of our goals was also to be among the first brands in Azerbaijan to test this format — and we're glad the opportunity aligned with one of our strongest campaigns.”

— Baku Electronics

When TopView makes sense — and when it doesn't

TopView is not a performance format. It won't replace in-feed for conversion-focused campaigns, retargeting, or catalog-driven objectives [see how Baku Electronics drove a CPC of $0.04 with Smart+ Catalog Ads during back-to-school season]. Its function is awareness at scale, delivered in a compressed window.

The format is well-suited to:

• Major sales events with a defined date and mass-market audience
• Product or brand launches where the goal is rapid, wide recognition
• Seasonal tentpole moments — holidays, sporting events, cultural moments — where you need to own the day before the noise builds

The booking mechanics reinforce this: you're purchasing a defined impression volume for a specific date. The strategy has to be set before the campaign starts, not optimized in real time.

Baku Electronics understood this going in — and framed TopView accordingly.

"TopView is not a standard tool for daily use — it's more of a strategic one.
In the future, we'll use it again for large-scale campaigns that are business-critical, have a significant budget, and require reaching the widest possible audience in the country in the shortest possible time.”

— Baku Electronics

What the format delivers in practice

TikTok's own research puts TopView's brand recall at 1.5x higher than other ad types on the platform. In a Kantar study, 68% of users said they were more likely to click on TopView ads compared to other formats.

The Baku Electronics campaign during Red Saturday produced results that held up against those benchmarks — and in some areas went beyond what the team expected.

"The results confirmed the strength of the format in numbers. One of the most impressive figures was a CPC of just $0.02. For a campaign of this scale, that's an extraordinarily efficient result.
The campaign also reached a record Reach for us — 3,570,913 unique users, with an average frequency of 4 impressions per user during the campaign period.
Compared to standard in-feed formats, TopView delivered both a higher CTR and significantly more views in a shorter timeframe."

— Baku Electronics

❗️ The team also noted a direct correlation between the campaign's digital reach and physical traffic to stores — a signal that the awareness impact translated beyond the platform.

What working with an official reseller actually means

TopView is gated for a reason. The format requires coordination with TikTok's sales infrastructure: inventory checks, booking windows, campaign forecasting, and format eligibility verification. A reseller embedded in that infrastructure can move faster than an advertiser working through standard channels.

When TopView became available in Azerbaijan, Evido by Aitarget secured the first slots for clients — not after the market had already moved, but at the point of launch.

That's the practical value of working with a certified partner: access to new formats when they open, not after everyone else has already been in.

Beyond format access, advertisers working through Evido by Aitarget get ad account pre-moderation to reduce rejection risk, support from certified specialists, and access to formats and placements that aren't available through standard self-serve accounts.

If your next campaign has a date, a budget, and a goal that requires Azerbaijan to notice — register on Aitarget platform or get in touch to discuss what's available.