In the first half of 2025 alone, TikTok Shop Vietnam experienced a staggering 148% year-over-year surge in Gross Merchandise Value (GMV) , capturing a dominant 42% market share. This explosive growth signals a fundamental shift in Vietnam’s e-commerce landscape—and now, with GMV Max becoming the mandatory campaign type for TikTok Shop Ads starting July 2025, media buying will never be the same.

But what exactly is GMV Max, and why is TikTok forcing this change? For beauty brands navigating Vietnam’s rapidly growing market—projected to reach $3.53 billion in 2024, with skincare accounting for 60% of the market—understanding this shift isn’t optional. It’s a competitive necessity.

This guide explores what GMV Max means for your media buying strategy, how it differs from traditional ad formats, and what Vietnam beauty brands must do to stay competitive in TikTok’s evolving commerce ecosystem.

What Is GMV Max? Understanding the Automation Revolution

The AI-Powered Solution for TikTok Shop Ads

GMV Max is an automation solution for TikTok Shop Ads that optimizes for total channel ROI by automatically managing product selection, creative assets, and campaign settings. In simpler terms: it’s TikTok’s AI-powered campaign type designed to maximize Gross Merchandise Value rather than impressions or clicks.

Key features of GMV Max:

Uses all available creative assets (including authorized affiliate videos) to create ads
Optimizes both organic delivery and paid ad traffic to achieve incremental GMV
Leverages all shoppable placements: TikTok Feed, Search, Shop Tab
Automatically creates and pauses ads, selects best-performing creatives, and optimizes audience settings
Calculates GMV for same-day orders with a one-day attribution window

Product GMV Max vs. LIVE GMV Max

TikTok offers two types of GMV Max campaigns:

Product GMV Max: Drives sales from your product catalog, optimizing across all placements. Currently available in Vietnam, the United States, the United Kingdom, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, and Singapore.

LIVE GMV Max: Optimizes traffic to get the most product sales during your LIVE events. Available in Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, the Philippines, Malaysia, and Singapore. Note: You can only have one LIVE GMV Max campaign per TikTok Identity.

The Mandatory Shift: Why TikTok Is Making GMV Max the Default

The July 2025 Migration Deadline

Starting July 2025, GMV Max became the default and only supported campaign type for TikTok Shop Ads. Key changes include:

Advertisers can no longer create, edit, or duplicate LIVE Shopping Ads, Product Shopping Ads, or Video Shopping Ads
Existing legacy campaigns remain active but cannot be edited
All new campaigns with “Sales” objective and TikTok Shop as destination must use GMV Max

What This Means for Your Media Buying Strategy

This shift reflects a broader industry trend: performance marketing is moving from manual control to machine-driven optimization. Success now depends on creative strength, conversion signals, and algorithmic trust, not manual bidding and granular placement control.

Strategic Implication: Advertisers must relinquish some strategic control to TikTok’s algorithms. This is a fundamental change in how media buying operates, from manual optimization to trust-based automation.

GMV Max vs. Traditional Ads: The Key Differences

Feature	GMV Max	Traditional Shop Ads
Automation	Full automation of products, creatives, placements	Manual setup required
Budget Management	AI-optimized across all placements	Manual bid management
Creative Selection	Auto-selects from all available assets	Manual creative selection
Performance Tracking	Blended data across all sources	Granular placement-level data
Organic + Paid Integration	Optimizes both together	Separate optimization
Campaign Types	Single format (GMV Max)	Multiple (LIVE, Product, Video Shopping Ads)

The “Black Box” Challenge

While GMV Max offers powerful automation, it comes with trade-offs:

Limited transparency on geography, audience, and creative performance
All Shop purchases during campaigns are attributed to GMV Max—even if the consumer never saw an ad
Harder to isolate paid vs. organic performance

Understanding and adapting to these limitations is critical for brands accustomed to granular performance reporting.

Why This Matters for Vietnam Beauty Brands

Vietnam’s Beauty Market Context

Total beauty market: $3.53 billion (2024 forecast)
Prestige beauty: $651.2 million, growing at 6.4% CAGR
International brands account for 93% of beauty sales
TikTok Shop is rapidly gaining share in beauty e-commerce, with a 148% YoY GMV growth in H1 2025 alone

The Beauty Advantage on GMV Max

1. High Visual Content – Beauty products are inherently visual, ideal for TikTok’s video-first format and GMV Max’s multi-placement optimization.

2. Influencer Ecosystem – Vietnam’s influencer culture is thriving. GMV Max automatically leverages authorized affiliate videos, tapping into the social proof that drives purchase decisions.

3. Multi-Product Catalogs – Beauty brands typically have extensive SKUs; GMV Max can promote all products or selected ones, optimizing across your entire catalog.

4. Full-Funnel Potential – GMV Max doesn’t have to work alone. Vietnamese fashion brand YaMe.vn demonstrated this brilliantly: by pairing Brand Consideration Ads with GMV Max in a two-step strategy, they achieved a 7.4x increase in new buyer acquisition rate and a 6.2x increase in overall conversion rate. The key? Building brand awareness first with consideration ads, then converting warm audiences with GMV Max.

How to Set Up and Optimize Your GMV Max Campaign

Prerequisites

TikTok Shop account in an eligible country (Vietnam is supported)
Business Center connected to advertiser account
Admin or Advertising Manager permission for your Shop
For LIVE GMV Max: Admin or Ads Tab permissions in Seller Center

Step-by-Step Setup for Product GMV Max

Click “GMV Max” in Ads Manager or Seller Center
Choose “Promote products” or “Promote all products”
Select optimization goal (recommended ROI target or custom)
Set daily budget (recommended or custom)
Schedule campaign start
Publish and activate

Important Note: Product Shopping Ads automatically pause when you launch a GMV Max campaign. Any active Product Shopping Ads will automatically stop showing the products you selected.

Step-by-Step Setup for LIVE GMV Max

Go to Seller Center and click Shop Ads
Click Create GMV Max ads
Click Promote LIVE
Choose the TikTok account with the LIVE event you’d like to promote
Set ROI target (recommended or custom)
Enter daily budget
Adjust schedule settings
Click Publish

Optimization Best Practices

1. Use Recommended ROI Targets – TikTok’s algorithm optimizes delivery based on historical performance data

2. Leverage Affiliate Content – GMV Max automatically includes authorized affiliate videos in its creative pool

3. Set Adequate Budget – Use recommended daily budget based on historical performance

4. Monitor Blended Performance – GMV Max reports total GMV, not just paid-only attribution. Adjust internal reporting accordingly.

5. Combine with Brand Consideration Ads – The YaMe.vn case study shows that warming up audiences with consideration ads before deploying GMV Max yields significantly stronger results

Potential Challenges and How to Address Them

The Transparency Problem

Challenge: GMV Max reports blended data, making it hard to isolate paid vs. organic performance.

Solution: Use TikTok’s first-party measurement tools and third-party partners. Set clear benchmarks and compare against pre-GMV Max baselines.

Loss of Strategic Control

Challenge: Brands must trust the algorithm with creative selection and budget allocation.

Solution: Start with conservative budgets. Test GMV Max alongside existing campaigns before fully migrating.

Attribution Issues

Challenge: All orders from promoted products are attributed to GMV Max, even from organic or affiliate sources.

Solution: Understand that GMV Max’s attribution reflects total channel ROI, not just ad performance. Adjust internal reporting accordingly.

Account Restrictions

Important Note: Only the primary Shop-linked account can launch GMV Max Shop ads. TikTok enforces that only the primary account linked to your Shop can run GMV Max campaigns.

The Future of Media Buying: What GMV Max Signals

Industry-Wide Trend

TikTok’s mandatory shift reflects a broader industry direction:

Google’s Performance Max
Meta’s Advantage+
TikTok’s GMV Max

AI-powered automation is the future of media buying. The question is no longer if brands will adopt it, but how they will adapt.

For Vietnam Beauty Brands

1. First-Mover Advantage – Brands that master GMV Max early can capture share before competition intensifies.

2. Brand + Performance Integration – GMV Max optimizes both organic and paid content, aligning with social commerce’s hybrid nature.

3. Data-Rich Future – As TikTok Shop matures, measurement and transparency will improve. The platform is actively evolving GMV Max capabilities.

4. Full-Funnel Thinking – As the YaMe.vn example demonstrates, GMV Max performs best when complemented with upper-funnel brand-building activities.

Key Takeaways: What GMV Max Means for Your Strategy

GMV Max is mandatory – Since July 2025, all new TikTok Shop Ads campaigns use GMV Max. Adaptation is not optional.
AI automation is the industry future – TikTok’s move mirrors Google and Meta; brands must learn to work with AI-powered tools.
Transparency is a challenge – Brands must adjust expectations and reporting approaches to accommodate blended data.
First-mover advantage matters – Brands that embrace GMV Max early can test, learn, and optimize before competition intensifies.
Beauty brands have unique advantages – Visual content, influencer ecosystems, and multi-product catalogs align well with GMV Max’s capabilities.
Full-funnel strategy is critical – Pair GMV Max with Brand Consideration Ads for optimal results.

FAQs About GMV Max for Vietnam Beauty Brands

Q1: Is GMV Max available in Vietnam?
Yes. GMV Max is currently available in Vietnam, along with Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, Singapore, and the United States.

Q2: Can I use GMV Max if I don’t have video ads ready?
Yes. GMV Max can use affiliate videos or approved organic content, including videos from your TikTok account.

Q3: Can I use the same products in both GMV Max and custom Shop Ads?
No. Once products are selected for GMV Max, they are automatically excluded from all Shop Ads Custom campaigns, including Product Shopping Ads and Video Shopping Ads.

Q4: Can I choose specific placements for GMV Max campaigns?
No. GMV Max optimizes across all placements (TikTok Feed, Search, Shop Tab) to deliver the best overall results.

Q5: Is GMV Max suitable for new sellers?
Absolutely. GMV Max is designed for all TikTok Shop advertisers and built with automation to help new sellers get started without advanced ad setup skills.

Q6: What is the attribution window for GMV Max?
GMV Max calculates GMV for same-day orders with a one-day attribution window.

Q7: Can I run multiple LIVE GMV Max campaigns?
No. There can only be one LIVE GMV Max campaign for one TikTok Identity.

Conclusion

GMV Max represents more than just a new campaign type—it signals a fundamental shift in how media buying operates in social commerce. For Vietnam beauty brands, the message is clear: automation is the future, and adaptation is not optional.

The brands that will thrive are those that embrace GMV Max’s capabilities while maintaining strong brand-building activities in the awareness stage. As the YaMe.vn case study proves, GMV Max doesn’t have to be a “black box” that sacrifices brand control—it can be a powerful conversion engine when paired with the right upper-funnel strategy.

Vietnam’s beauty market is growing at an unprecedented pace. TikTok Shop captured 42% market share with 148% YoY growth in H1 2025. GMV Max is now the vehicle that will drive the next phase of this growth. The question isn’t whether you’ll adopt it—it’s how quickly you’ll master it.

Why GMV Max Is Changing Media Buying: A Strategic Guide for Vietnam Beauty Brands