Retail media in Vietnam: how Shopee Ads and TikTok GMV Max work

October 19, 2026

Tin Le

This is not a step-by-step guide to setting up campaigns. Shopee and TikTok already publish official guides for that. What I cover here is how retail media in Vietnam charges sellers on these two marketplaces, and how to work out your break-even ROAS before 11.11.

In Q2 2026, Shopee’s advertising revenue grew more than 70% year over year, while GMV (gross merchandise value, the total value of goods sold) grew only 28.4% (Sea Limited, August 2026). What sellers spend on marketplace ads is growing more than twice as fast as GMV. If you cannot calculate your break-even ROAS, it is easy to rack up orders and still lose money.

Those are regional figures. In Vietnam, e-commerce GMV for the first 9 months of 2026 reached VND 411,800 billion, up 22% (YouNet ECI, October 2026). Shopee and TikTok Shop have both changed their tools and fee schedules in ways that push sellers to spend more on ads.

Marketplace advertising (retail media) is advertising that sellers pay for inside Shopee or TikTok Shop so that their products, store or livestream appear in search results, recommendations and video feeds. Because the marketplace both sells the ad placement and records the order, it measures the revenue itself and optimizes bids on its own against the target ROAS or ROI that the seller sets.

How is it different from Meta or Google ads?

Marketplace ads appear while people are already shopping, so they sit closer to the purchase decision than social media ads. The trade-off is that the marketplace keeps all the data. ROAS (return on ad spend) = revenue / ad spend, so spending VND 1 million to bring in VND 4 million is a ROAS of 4. The marketplace calculates this number by rules it sets itself, and you have no pixel of your own to verify it.

Think of the marketplace as the owner of a market hall. It charges rent for the stall (fixed fees), takes a percentage of each sale (transaction fees), and then sells the spots at the end of each aisle (visibility). Both marketplaces are following Meta’s lead: you set a budget and a goal, and the algorithm picks the placements, the audience and the creative on its own (see our article on Meta advertising in 2026).

What types of Shopee Ads are there?

Shopee Vietnam calls its ads “Dịch vụ Hiển thị Shopee” (DVHT, literally Shopee display services). You find them in Seller Centre under Marketing Centre. The main types:

Type	Where it appears	How it is priced
Product ads in Search	Search results page	Keyword bidding, pay per click
Product ads in Discovery	Daily Discover (homepage) and You May Also Like (product page)	Pay per click, with targeting by age, gender, location and behavior
Shop+ ads	Shop card and product card on the search results page	Keyword bidding, minimum bid VND 1,500
Livestream ads	Shopee Live homepage, Discover section	Target ROAS set for the live session
Homepage ads	Homepage banner	oCPM, charged per 1,000 impressions

Shop+ replaced the old Shop ads from August 13, 2026 and adds a share of voice (SOV) metric by keyword. The homepage banner is the only type charged on a CPM (cost per mille) basis, which makes it a better fit for a big brand launching a product than for a store that needs orders right away.

Shopee GMV Max (Tối đa Doanh thu)

Tối đa Doanh thu, which sellers usually just call GMV Max, is the automated bidding mode for product ads. With system-optimized ROAS (Tối ưu ROAS bởi hệ thống), Shopee picks the ROAS level for you, and this is the recommended option for new products. With custom ROAS (Tùy chỉnh ROAS), you set your own target and Shopee shows 3 suggested levels.

This mode delivers across more placements than manual campaigns: Search, Discovery, Games and Shopee Coins. Group campaigns let several products share one budget and one target. Shopee advises against setting ROAS much higher than its suggestion, and recommends changing the target only 1 to 2 times a day, by no more than 20% each time.

Manual campaigns are gradually being upgraded to GMV Max, with 14 days’ notice. During the last 7 days before the upgrade, you cannot edit manual campaigns or create new ones. Shopee has not announced a single date for everyone, so watch for the notice in your account.

Sale Day Bid Optimization (Tối ưu Giá thầu Ngày Sale)

During mega sales, the system can lower your target ROAS by up to 30% on custom ROAS campaigns (10% on system-optimized ROAS). The budget is raised by 20% at a time, up to 5 times, and then goes back to its previous level the next day. You turn it on or off under “Giải Pháp Thông Minh Tăng Doanh Số” (smart solutions to grow sales).

How does TikTok GMV Max work?

Since July 2025, GMV Max has been the default and only campaign type for TikTok Shop ads with a sales objective. You can no longer create the old Shopping Ads, although existing campaigns keep running. Both kinds of GMV Max are available in Vietnam.

Product GMV Max

You choose the products, set a daily budget and a target ROI. ROI (return on investment) here means revenue divided by cost, the same as ROAS. It is not profit. The system chooses the videos on its own (including authorized affiliate videos), the placements and the audience. When the campaign hits its target, the budget can rise automatically by 50% at a time, up to 10 times a day.

Max delivery works the other way around: it uses a separate budget, tries to spend all of it, and accepts that ROI will fluctuate. TikTok suggests a daily budget of at least 10 times your average order value.

LIVE GMV Max

LIVE GMV Max runs at the store level, with one campaign per TikTok account. It optimizes both paid placements and organic traffic into the live room, and only increases spend when ROI is close to target. When a store’s main account runs LIVE GMV Max, that account’s old LIVE Shopping Ads are paused automatically.

ROI protection

Since February 25, 2026, TikTok refunds ad credit when a day’s ROI falls below 90% of the target ROI and the campaign has more than 20 orders that day. Refund = total cost minus [total revenue / (daily target ROI × 0.9)]. With a target of 5, a spend of VND 10 million and revenue of VND 40 million, you get back about VND 1.11 million. Days on which you use Max delivery or edit the products in the campaign are not protected.

Marketplace ROAS is not profit

The two marketplaces count ad revenue differently, but both count more broadly than the sales the ads actually add.

	Shopee Ads	TikTok Product GMV Max
Orders credited to ads	Purchases within 7 days of a click, or within 1 day of an ad view	Every order of the promoted product while the campaign runs, including organic and affiliate orders
Reported revenue	Direct GMV, and GMV including other products in the shop	Gross revenue, including the marketplace’s subsidies
Formula	ROAS = GMV / cost	ROI = gross revenue / cost

Shopee uses a 7-day attribution window: someone who clicks an ad on Monday, then searches for the product again and buys on Saturday, still counts toward the ad. People who only see the ad without clicking are also counted if they buy within 1 day (Shopee Ads, Tracking campaign performance). TikTok’s own help page points out that Product GMV Max figures include both paid and organic traffic. As a result, ROI and cost per order may not accurately reflect how well a video performs.

Both numbers are calculated before marketplace fees, returns and cancellations, and cost of goods. With a 20% profit margin, a ROAS of 5 only gets you to break-even. I recommend putting two other numbers next to it: ad spend divided by the store’s total GMV, and total orders before and after you switch on GMV Max. If total orders do not rise while revenue “from ads” does, the ads are taking credit for organic orders.

2026 marketplace fees tied to advertising

From May 9, 2026, TikTok Shop raised its transaction fee from 5% to 6% (Báo Công Thương, the Ministry of Industry and Trade’s newspaper, May 2026). From May 19, 2026, stores that spend at least 4% of GMV on GMV Max over 30 days get a 1 percentage point cut in the transaction fee from day 31, meaning they pay 5%. From October 21, 2026, the discount moves to tiers based on the share of ad spend over 30 days: 4% to under 7% gets 0.5% off, 7% to under 10% gets 0.7% off, 10% to under 15% gets 1% off, 15% to under 20% gets 1.2% off, and 20% or more gets 1.5% off (TikTok Shop Seller University, updated October 13, 2026).

Shopee raised its transaction processing fee to 6% from May 1, 2026 (from May 8, 2026 for Shopee Mall). Invited sellers can get a discount on this fee. If they join, part of each order’s revenue is automatically topped up into their ad balance and a Shop GMV Max campaign is switched on. The size of the discount is not published.

A program called “Duy trì hiển thị” (maintain visibility), planned to start on May 29, 2026, would have taken at least 1% of each order’s revenue and moved it into the seller’s ad account. Shopee postponed it after a request from the Vietnam Competition Commission (VnEconomy, May 2026).

Under TikTok Shop’s new tier table, a store with VND 1 billion in monthly GMV that spends VND 40 million (4%) on ads saves only VND 5 million in fees. To save VND 10 million it has to spend VND 100 million (10%) or more. If that ad money is not profitable on its own, do not raise the budget just to reach a higher tier.

How to calculate break-even ROAS after marketplace fees

Run this calculation for each SKU before you enter a target ROAS in Shopee or a target ROI in TikTok.

Example (hypothetical figures, not the fee schedule of any specific category): I sell a product at VND 250,000 on 11.11, with a cost of goods of VND 90,000. Assume percentage-based marketplace fees (fixed, transaction and service fees) add up to 24%, fixed costs per order (infrastructure fee, packaging) are VND 10,000, and returns and cancellations run at 8%. I want to keep a profit of 10% of the selling price.

Percentage-based marketplace fees: 250,000 × 24% = VND 60,000.
Margin before ads = (selling price minus cost of goods, percentage fees and fixed cost per order) / selling price. 250,000 minus 90,000, 60,000 and 10,000 leaves VND 90,000, or 36%.
Break-even ROAS = 1 / margin before ads = 1 / 0.36 = 2.78.
Target ROAS = 1 / (margin before ads minus the margin you want to keep). To keep a profit of VND 25,000 (10%), I can spend at most 90,000 minus 25,000 = VND 65,000 on ads per order (26%). Target ROAS = 1 / 0.26 = 3.85.
ROAS you need to see in the marketplace report = target ROAS / (1 minus the return and cancellation rate) = 3.85 / 0.92 = 4.18.

If I set 3.85 on Shopee and turn on Sale Day Bid Optimization, the target can be cut by 30% to about 2.70, which is below the 2.78 break-even. For a thin-margin SKU like this, I would set a higher target or turn the feature off.

With Product GMV Max, suppose 30% of the revenue credited to the campaign is organic orders you would have had anyway. The reported ROI then needs to be around 4.18 / 0.7 ≈ 6.0 for the incremental part to hit the target. You only learn the real share by comparing total orders before and after the campaign goes live. How to calculate break-even discounts under the 2026 fee schedules is covered in Adtek’s 11.11 plan.

Retail media in Vietnam: checklist before 11.11

From October 19, there are 23 days left until November 11. Shopee recommends giving new campaigns a full 7-day learning period, so most of the setup needs to be done before November 4.

Both marketplaces

Check the latest fee schedule in Seller Centre, then recalculate break-even ROAS at the sale price for each key SKU. TikTok Shop has charged an extra logistics handling fee on parcels over 10 kg since October 12, 2026, up to VND 65,000.
Top up your ad balance and check your payment method.
Set up an hourly tracking sheet for D-0: spend, total store GMV, ROAS against break-even, and inventory.

Shopee

Check which manual campaigns have moved, or are about to move, to GMV Max, and what the budget looks like after they are merged.
SKUs with data: use custom ROAS from your spreadsheet, and group SKUs with the same profit margin into Group campaigns. New SKUs: use system-optimized ROAS.
Run Shop+ on brand keywords and track SOV.
Turn Sale Day Bid Optimization on or off for each campaign, depending on the gap between target ROAS and break-even.

TikTok Shop

Authorize strong affiliate videos for Product GMV Max. With too few videos, GMV Max has nothing to deliver.
Set target ROI from your spreadsheet, after taking out the share of organic orders, and turn on automatic budget increases for key SKUs.
Use Max delivery only for the midnight slot and the evening of November 11, with a separate budget. ROI protection does not apply then.
Create LIVE GMV Max for your confirmed live schedule, and do not edit the product list on peak days. During warm-up week, track CTR (click-through rate) and revenue per video.

What to avoid

Setting target ROAS below break-even, such as 2.5 when break-even is 2.78.
Turning on Sale Day Bid Optimization for thin-margin SKUs, letting a target of 3.85 slide to 2.70.
Treating a Product GMV Max ROI of 4.18 as a hit before you subtract organic orders.

By D+7, recalculate the real ROAS for each marketplace based on revenue after returns and cancellations, then move your 12.12 budget to the channel with the higher contribution margin.

If you need help calculating break-even ROAS per SKU, reviewing your GMV Max settings or splitting your 11.11 budget across Shopee and TikTok Shop stores, contact the Adtek team.