Why flooding TikTok first is the smarter Singapore campaign strategy

The correction

The paper models a creator releasing serialized content of uncertain quality. Under uniform pricing, meaning the same price applies to every release, simultaneous release beats staggering it. Releasing everything at once avoids the problem where people who did not like the first installment simply skip the second. That is the paper’s actual default finding, and it is closer to flooding than to a slow rollout.

What uniform pricing means for a creator roster

Uniform pricing is not a campaign term, it is a modeling assumption. It means the price does not change between the first release and the second. Translated to a creator campaign, this is what it looks like when a brand pays 20 to 100 nano and micro creators a flat, similar rate to post within the same window, rather than splitting budget into a cheap test tranche and an expensive second tranche. There is no repricing happening at the creator-fee level at all. That absence of a pricing lever at the creator stage is exactly the condition under which the paper says flooding wins over staggering.

What a cheap test actually means on TikTok

TikTok tests every video independently, regardless of the follower count behind it, usually against a small audience of a few hundred people within the first hour or so. That test costs nothing beyond the creator fee already paid for the post to exist. Posting 20 to 100 creators at once does not run one campaign, it runs 20 to 100 free, parallel tests at the same time, each testing a slightly different hook or angle against TikTok’s own algorithm. Discovering which ones work costs zero incremental ad spend. The paid money only gets spent once the winners have already declared themselves organically.

The harvest phase is not new content, it is paid amplification

Once a public signal is visible, meaning a video’s performance is out in the open through comments, shares, and saves, that signal can be monetized more effectively than it could before anyone had seen it. On TikTok, the tool for that is Spark Ads, which let a brand pay to boost a post that already exists, using the creator’s authorization, while keeping the original comments, likes, and shares attached as visible proof. TikTok reports Spark Ads generating a 142 percent higher engagement rate, a 43 percent higher conversion rate, and a 4 percent lower CPM compared to standard ads that do not carry that organic history with them.

In practice, that means running the flood across 20 to 100 creators, then narrowing to whichever 10 to 20 videos actually cleared real completion, share, and save thresholds in the first 24 to 48 hours, and putting paid budget behind only those.

Running this on a Singapore campaign

Brief the full roster, 20 to 100 nano and micro creators, to post within a tight window around the same launch moment, since they are cheap enough to run at that volume and TikTok tests each post on its own merit regardless of who posted it. Watch completion rate, share rate, and save rate over the first 24 to 48 hours, since organic engagement on TikTok is heavily front-loaded in that window. Build Spark Ad authorization into every creator agreement upfront, not as an afterthought, since chasing a code after a video is already trending wastes the exact window when boosting it matters most. Then move paid budget only behind the 10 to 20 videos that actually cleared that organic bar, not the full roster.