A seller who has only ever run Shopee Ads cannot just copy the same campaign structure onto TikTok Shop. TikTok Shop’s Shop Ads product stopped accepting manual, keyword-level bidding entirely in July 2025. GMV Max, an automated system that bids against a seller’s own Target ROI number, is now the only campaign type available for Shop merchants. Shopee Ads and Lazada’s Sponsored Discovery still both let a seller set bids by hand.
That single difference changes what a seller actually controls on each platform, separate from whatever each platform charges per click or per sale.
Shopee Ads: manual CPC, seller sets the bid
Shopee Ads runs on cost-per-click pricing across three ad types, Search Ads, Discovery Ads (sometimes labeled Targeting Ads), and Shop Ads. A seller chooses keywords or targeting criteria and sets a bid per click directly, with Shopee showing a suggested bid range to stay competitive in the auction. Daily or total budget caps sit on top of the bid, controlling total spend rather than the per-click price itself.
Minimum CPC bids are set per market and per ad type rather than published as one consolidated Singapore-wide table. Documented examples from other Shopee markets give a sense of scale, the Philippines lists minimum bids from ₱0.30 for Targeting Ads up to ₱0.50 for Shop Ads, Malaysia’s minimums run as low as RM0.07 for Search and Discovery Ads. Neither of those is a Singapore dollar figure. This article does not extrapolate one. A seller planning a Shopee Ads budget in Singapore should pull the current minimum bid directly from Seller Centre’s ad creation flow, since it varies by ad type and can change.
TikTok Shop: GMV Max, automated bidding only
TikTok Shop’s ad structure works differently at a mechanical level, not just a pricing one. As of July 2025, GMV Max is the sole campaign type for TikTok Shop merchants running Shop Ads. A seller does not set a bid per click or per keyword. Instead, a seller sets a Target ROI, the minimum revenue-to-spend ratio they will accept. GMV Max’s automated system then decides how to spend the budget across creator content and placements to hit that target.
The minimum spend still has real floors underneath the automation. General TikTok campaign minimums sit at US$50 at the campaign level and US$20 at the ad group level. GMV Max’s own Max Delivery Optimization feature carries a lower floor, a minimum daily budget of US$10. TikTok’s own guidance for a new campaign using its Highest Gross Revenue bidding suggests setting the initial budget at US$50 or 20 times the expected cost per purchase, whichever is higher, specifically because an automated bidding system needs enough budget to gather signal before it can optimize toward the target.
The practical shift for a seller moving from manual CPC thinking to GMV Max is a change in what gets optimized. A Shopee Ads seller manages a bid price directly. A TikTok Shop seller manages a target ratio and a budget, and lets the system find the bid.
Lazada: two campaign types, Sponsored Discovery in transition
Lazada currently runs two parallel ad products, Sponsored Discovery and the newer Sponsored Max, with Lazada’s own documentation describing a transition period rather than a hard cutover date. Sponsored Discovery will continue running alongside Sponsored Max during that period, per Lazada Sponsored Solutions’ own FAQ, with sellers encouraged to start testing Sponsored Max while existing Sponsored Discovery campaigns keep running.
Within Sponsored Discovery, a seller chooses between an Automated campaign type, which optimizes for the most clicks and sales within a given budget without manual bid control, and a Standard campaign type, which hands a seller direct control over which products or keywords to bid on and lets them adjust individual bid prices.
Lazada’s minimum spend is the lowest of the three platforms in practical terms. Daily budgets as low as SGD 5 to 10 are technically workable, though that level of spend rarely generates enough impressions or clicks to produce meaningful optimization data. Seller guidance generally recommends SGD 10 to 20 a day as a more realistic minimum for a campaign to produce a usable read within two to three weeks.
What the mechanics actually mean for campaign structure
The real difference across the three platforms is not which one is cheaper. It is how much manual control a seller retains over where the budget goes. Shopee Ads and Lazada’s Standard Sponsored Discovery campaigns both put keyword-level and bid-level decisions directly in a seller’s hands, which rewards a seller who already understands their own margin well enough to bid precisely. TikTok Shop’s GMV Max removes that lever entirely for Shop Ads, in exchange for an automated system that needs a real budget floor and a realistic Target ROI before it can perform, which rewards a seller who has clean margin data to set that target correctly but offers no way to hand-tune the bid if the automated result looks wrong.
A seller running budget across all three platforms is not managing one skill split three ways. Shopee and Lazada’s Standard track require active bid management. TikTok Shop requires setting the target correctly upfront and trusting the system, since there is no manual override once a GMV Max campaign is live.
The plain answer
Set aside real testing budget before judging any of the three, since minimum viable spend differs sharply. TikTok Shop’s GMV Max needs at least US$50 to gather enough signal to optimize. Lazada’s Sponsored Discovery can produce a usable read from SGD 10 to 20 a day. Shopee Ads’ minimum depends on the specific ad type and market bid floor pulled directly from Seller Centre. A seller who wants direct bid control should lean on Shopee Ads or Lazada’s Standard Sponsored Discovery campaigns. A seller who trusts their own margin data more than their own bidding instincts, and has at least US$50 a day to let the system learn, gets more out of TikTok Shop’s GMV Max than out of fighting an auction manually elsewhere.
Research Ledger (7 claims)
| Entity | Claim | Source | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| TikTok Shop | GMV Max became the sole campaign type for Shop Ads as of July 2025, replacing manual bidding | TikTok Ads Manager Help Center, GMV Max documentation | VERIFIED |
| TikTok Shop | General campaign minimum US$50, ad group minimum US$20; GMV Max Delivery Optimization minimum daily budget US$10 | TikTok Ads Manager Help Center, Budget and Bidding FAQ | VERIFIED |
| TikTok Shop | Recommended initial budget of US$50 or 20 times expected cost per purchase for Highest Gross Revenue bidding | TikTok Ads Manager Help Center | VERIFIED |
| Lazada | Sponsored Discovery continues running alongside the newer Sponsored Max during an active transition period, no fixed end date published | Lazada Sponsored Solutions, official FAQ page | VERIFIED |
| Lazada | Sponsored Discovery offers Automated and Standard campaign types, the latter with manual bid control | Lazada Sponsored Solutions documentation, cross-referenced against seller-agency guides | VERIFIED |
| Lazada | Practical daily budgets as low as SGD 5 to 10, with SGD 10 to 20 recommended for usable optimization data | Seller-agency guidance summarizing Lazada Sponsored Solutions recommendations | INFERRED |
| Shopee | Minimum CPC bids vary by market and ad type; no single published Singapore figure found | Secondary guides citing Philippines (₱0.30 to ₱0.50) and Malaysia (RM0.07) minimums; Shopee’s own Singapore ad help pages did not render as extractable text during this research pass | UNCHECKED for Singapore specifically, flagged rather than estimated, seller should confirm current bid floor directly in Seller Centre |