即创
Douyin's ad-creative pipeline — credits come from ad spend, not from a checkout
Overview
Ocean Engine (Douyin's advertising platform) built its own creative workbench. The left rail is four jobs: the inspiration gallery shows formats that already performed, finished-video tools generate a spot and spin profitable variants from it, raw-material tools make digital-human presenters, AI video and AI scripts, and an asset library keeps it all organised. It charges credits instead of cash, and credits cannot be bought: every Monday the platform issues a weekly amount sized by your ad spend from the week before, and whatever is older than 30 days disappears. This is a production line for advertisers, not a creation site for everyone.
Why it stands out
- Credits are not for sale (the official FAQ answer to "can I buy credits" is: not supported yet). Basic credits arrive every Monday 00:00, calculated as last week's ad spend × a platform coefficient, default starting value 180, with a guaranteed floor and a cap, expiring after 30 days. Verified live on an account: seven consecutive weeks of +180, a 720 balance, and 180 expiring every week.
- Costs are per second of finished video and the spread between models is enormous: Seedance 1.0 runs 3–10 credits/sec, 1.5 is 14 (7 on promo), 2.0 is 54 (10), 2.5 is 81 (16); outfit swap 12/sec, background swap 8/sec.
- The Agent moved from per-task to per-second billing on 2026-09-22 at a flat 2 credits/sec; after the first preview, the next two script revisions regenerate at 90% off (0.2 credits/sec), the third returns to full price.
- Digital-human videos are priced off the script: 0.17 seconds of audio per character, multiplied by the model's 1 or 9 credits/sec. Batch jobs add every script together first.
- Credits are pre-deducted and the refund rules are explicit: cancel while queuing and you get all of it back, cancel mid-run and you don't, a platform-side failure refunds in full, and anything still queued after 24 hours auto-fails with a refund. The account centre keeps 90 days of history.
- Ad spend also buys your place in the queue — scheduling weighs 30-day cumulative spend and creative ROI, and the rules state outright that asset volume is not the main factor. Credits bind to your UID and are shared across organisations under it, but never transferable.
E-commerce and gaming teams already buying Douyin traffic through Ocean Engine or Qianchuan and shipping dozens of creatives a week. Without an advertiser account you never get past the login screen, so organic-only creators should look elsewhere.
