TikTok ad script template

Thirty seconds of short-form video is about eighty spoken words. That is less than this paragraph and the one after it. Almost every first draft is double it, which is why almost every first draft gets cut badly in the edit instead of being written short in the first place.

Here is a beat structure that fits, with word counts you can hold yourself to.

The template

Roughly 70–90 words total. If a beat runs long, it is nearly always beat 3 — people love explaining their product.

Beat by beat

1. Hook (0–3s)

One sentence, the interesting word early, and something already moving on screen. Not a greeting, not a logo, not a slow reveal. If you need help producing candidates, that is a whole method of its own.

2. Stakes (3–8s)

The cost of the problem, in the viewer’s life rather than in the abstract. “It’s annoying” is not stakes. “You end up buying another one every spring” is.

This beat is where you either keep the person the hook stopped or lose them. It is also the beat most drafts skip entirely, jumping straight from a claim to a product — which reads as a sales pitch, because it is one.

3. Turn (8–14s)

Now the product. Name it once, say what it does in one clause, and move on. This is not the specification section. The single most common script problem in ecommerce is a fourteen-second turn.

4. Proof (14–22s)

The longest beat, and the one people actually watch. Show the thing doing the thing: real hands, normal speed, no cut hiding the moment it works. If you have only one strong shot in the whole video, it belongs here.

5. Objection (22–27s)

Name the doubt the viewer is holding and answer it. “Yes, it’s heavier — that’s the metal gear.” Answering an objection out loud does more for conversion than any amount of additional benefit, because the viewer already had the objection and you just proved you know the product honestly.

6. Close (27–30s)

One instruction. Not three. “Link’s in the bio” or “It’s the small one you want” — pick the single next action and say only that. Stacking a follow request, a comment prompt and a purchase CTA gets you none of them.

A filled-in example

Product: a £29 reusable coffee cup with a mechanical seal.

Hook (0–3s) — (cup upside down in a bag, being shaken) “I’ve had this in a bag with a laptop for four months.”

Stakes (3–8s) — “I’ve binned two bags because of a cup that said ’leak proof’ and wasn’t.”

Turn (8–14s) — “This one has an actual latch. You feel it close — it isn’t a screw thread you hope you tightened enough.”

Proof (14–22s) — (fills it, latches it, turns it over on a white desk, waits, lifts it, wipes underneath with a tissue and shows the tissue) “Full, upside down, ninety seconds.”

Objection (22–27s) — “It’s heavier than a plastic one. That’s the latch and the steel — it’s the reason it works.”

Close (27–30s) — “The 350ml is the one that fits a car holder.”

Eighty-one words.

The three edits that fix most drafts

Cut the first sentence. Not shorten — cut. In most drafts the real hook is sentence two, and sentence one is the run-up. Read it starting from the second sentence and see whether anything is missing. Usually nothing is.

Delete every “so”, “basically”, “actually”, and “just”. Then read it again. These are the words that make a written script sound like a nervous person, and they are almost always removable without changing a single meaning.

Move the best shot earlier. Whatever your most visually convincing moment is, it is probably in beat 4 where it belongs — but check that a fragment of it is not better used in beat 1. A hook that shows the proof and then explains it is stronger than one that promises proof for later.

Variants worth having

Once one script works, the cheapest wins are variants of it — same body, one beat swapped:

• Same script, different hook. The single highest-leverage variant, and the only one worth running first.
• Same script, different objection. Beat 5 swapped for the second-most-common doubt. Reaches a different slice of the same audience.
• Same script, no voice. Text-only, sound-off version. Cheap to produce from the same footage and often the surprise performer.

Run those against each other rather than filming three unrelated concepts. When only one thing changes, a winner actually tells you something — which is the whole argument in how to test ad hooks before you spend.

Related

• Hook formulas that stop the scroll — patterns for beat 1
• The first 3 seconds of a TikTok ad — beat 1 in frame-by-frame detail
• Amazon product video script — the same idea for a listing page, where the viewer is already deciding