London based Nest Commerce wins TikTok tech grant to launch AI creative platform Hummingbird

TikTok and Nest Commerce have announced a partnership to launch Hummingbird, Nest's AI creative and performance platform, on TikTok. TikTok provided Nest with a technology grant to help develop Hummingbird for the platform. The partnership was announced on TikTok's business blog and has now launched on the platform.

Creative is one of the biggest drivers of performance on TikTok. Hummingbird is designed to help brands produce a steady flow of fresh, varied creative, testing different formats, messages and ideas, learning quickly from what works and applying those insights to what they make next. This includes AI created video fronted by avatars.

Real-Time Creative Optimization and Performance Data

The platform analyses how a brand's live advertising is performing in real-time, identifies the creative elements resonating with audiences and uses those insights to inform the next generation of assets. It can produce creative variations across static, motion and UGC-style formats, while monitoring live campaigns for signs of creative fatigue.

Crucially, Nest's creative experts remain at the centre of the process, using AI to increase the speed and scale at which teams can test, learn and create. Nest's portfolio data shows the shift already underway on the platform for leading advertisers. In the agency's performance and creative review covering 50+ brands, TikTok CPMs fell 31% year-on-year while spend on the platform rose 38% and cost per acquisition dropped 10%.

Empowering Creative Teams With Scaled Experimentation

Kris Boger, General Manager, Business Solutions UK, Ireland and Benelux at TikTok, said: "Creative is one of the biggest drivers of performance on TikTok, but the challenge for brands is keeping pace with how quickly culture and audiences move. The opportunity for AI isn't to replace creativity, it's to help great creative teams learn faster, experiment more and turn those insights into better work. That's what we saw in Hummingbird. Nest has combined technology with real creative and performance expertise, with people firmly in control of the process. It's exactly the kind of innovation we want to encourage on TikTok, which is why we backed its development and are excited to launch it with Nest at our London headquarters."

Will Ashton, CEO and co-founder of Nest Commerce, said: "Winning this direct funding from TikTok for tech innovation is a huge endorsement of the direction we have taken. TikTok gives brands an incredible opportunity to learn quickly from creative and turn those insights into growth. We built Hummingbird to help teams do that at greater speed and scale, understanding what's resonating, using those signals to shape the next round of creative, and keeping expert judgement at the heart of every decision."

Hummingbird for TikTok launched at TikTok Unlocked where Kris Boger and Ian Smith, Director of E-commerce and Marketing at Urban Outfitters, spoke alongside the Nest team.