Opening a Douyin Ad Account as a Foreign Company: Process, Documents and Routes

Douyin holds a large share of consumer attention in China, but its advertising system is not open to self-serve sign-ups from abroad. Every Douyin ad account sits inside Ocean Engine, ByteDance’s advertising platform, and opening one as a foreign company is mostly a matter of choosing the right entry route and preparing documents that pass review. This article explains how the process works in practice.

Ocean Engine is the front door

Douyin ads are bought through Ocean Engine (巨量引擎), the unified advertising platform ByteDance operates for Douyin, Toutiao, Xigua Video and its other apps. There is no standalone “Douyin ads manager” you can register for with an overseas email address. An advertiser account is created inside Ocean Engine, funded with a prepaid balance, and linked to the products, app or landing pages you want to promote.

The important point is that account opening is entity-based. An Ocean Engine account is registered to a company, not to an individual media buyer, and the platform verifies that company’s qualifications before any campaign can run. Almost every practical question a foreign advertiser runs into — which documents are needed, how top-ups work, whose name appears on invoices — comes back to that entity question.

Two routes in: your own Chinese entity, or an agency account

The first route is to open an account under your own Chinese entity. If you already have a subsidiary or a wholly foreign-owned enterprise in China, the account can be registered in that entity’s name, with its business licence submitted for qualification review. You control the account directly, pay locally in RMB, and deal with the platform in Chinese. For companies without a China presence, this route means incorporating first, which is a much bigger project than opening an ad account.

The second route is an agency account. An authorised agency opens and holds the advertiser account under its own arrangements with the platform, while your company supplies its home-country business documents for the qualification file. You do not need a Chinese entity, the agency handles submission, top-ups and first-line troubleshooting, and communication can happen in English. The trade-off is that the account sits within the agency’s structure rather than your own, so it is worth agreeing in advance how balances, reporting access and a possible later transfer would be handled. For most overseas advertisers testing China for the first time, working through a Douyin agency account is the practical starting point.

Documents you will be asked for

The exact list depends on your industry and route, but the core file is consistent. Expect to provide most of the following:

• Business registration — your company’s incorporation or registration certificate from its home jurisdiction.
• Website and landing pages — the site or pages the ads will point to, which must be live and reviewable.
• Industry qualifications — licences or permits relevant to what you sell. Food, cosmetics, education, finance and health-adjacent categories all attract extra requirements, which may include filings or registrations specific to the Chinese market.
• Brand documentation — trademark certificates or authorisation letters if you are advertising branded goods that are not your own brand.
• Authorisation letters — if an agency applies on your behalf, a signed letter authorising it to do so.

Documents in languages other than Chinese may need a Chinese translation, and reviewers sometimes come back with follow-up requests — a different document format, a clearer scan, an additional licence. Build a little slack into your timeline for that back-and-forth rather than treating the first submission as the final one.

What the review actually checks

Qualification review looks at three things. First, that the business is real and that the documents match the company applying. Second, that the industry is eligible: some categories cannot advertise on Douyin at all, and regulated categories are checked against the licences in the file. Third, the landing page. It has to load properly, describe the same product or service the ads describe, and carry the disclosures Chinese rules require, such as identifiable company information.

Creatives are reviewed separately, campaign by campaign. Chinese advertising law restricts exaggerated and absolute claims — wording equivalent to “the best” or “number one” is a common rejection reason, as are unsubstantiated efficacy claims in beauty and health products and misleading before-and-after imagery. It is normal for first campaigns to go through one or two rounds of creative revision while you learn where the lines are. With complete documents, account approval typically takes a few business days, longer for regulated industries.

After approval: linking what you promote

An approved account is not yet ready to spend. Before the first campaign, the asset you are promoting has to be registered and approved inside the platform: a website domain for traffic campaigns, an app listing for app promotion, or a Douyin Shop connection if the campaign points at products sold inside Douyin. Each asset type has its own short review, and mismatches between the registered asset and the ads — a different domain in the creative than the one approved, for example — are a common cause of early rejections.

Most advertisers also set up conversion tracking at this stage, using Ocean Engine’s event tools or the analytics arrangement their agency provides, so that campaign reporting measures sign-ups, purchases or leads rather than clicks alone. Doing this before launch is considerably easier than retrofitting it after spend has started, and it gives the first creative review rounds a clear purpose: you are testing messages against a measurable outcome from day one.

Top-ups, currency and day-to-day operation

Ocean Engine accounts run on prepaid balance: campaigns draw down the balance and stop when it is empty, so keeping the account funded is part of routine operation. On the direct route, top-ups are paid in RMB from the Chinese entity’s bank account. On the agency route, you pay the agency — commonly by international wire, and some agencies also accept USDT — and the agency credits the account in RMB. Ask how conversion and handling are charged before the first payment, not after, and keep the paperwork for each top-up with your finance records.

The backend is in Chinese, and reporting, spend records and tax documents are all issued against the account’s registered entity. If nobody on your team reads Chinese, factor in agency reporting or translation support from the start rather than discovering the gap at the first monthly reconciliation. If you are comparing entry routes across several Chinese platforms at once, our overview of agency ad accounts lays out how the same entity question plays out on each platform.

Frequently asked questions