Platform / Douyin

Five lanes, one Douyin brief. AIGC, in scale.

Content. Ad creative. UGC. Live. Avatar.

We make five kinds of work for Douyin. Short-form video for the For You feed. Paid creative cut for Ocean Engine. KOC-style reviews at the volume the feed burns through. Then the parts of a Shop livestream you see on screen, fronted, if you want one, by a digital host that speaks for the brand in any language.

One brief covers all five. One creative direction, then sixty cuts for sixty audiences. The AI work happens inside a working production company, with directors signing off every frame.

Hong Kong + Shanghai / Douyin-native creative under one director

A close editorial portrait of a hand holding a phone in warm rim light, the phone screen filled with a paused vertical Douyin video including the right-side icon rail and the spinning circular music disc of the For You interface. Platform work / Douyin

Why it matters

What we ship
into Douyin.

Five lanes, all handled in one place. Short-form video for the For You feed, the kind that has to win in the first second or lose the viewer. Ad creative cut for Ocean Engine, across In-Feed, TopView, Search and Shop cards. KOC-style reviews and hauls, made at volume. Livestream production for Douyin Shop. And a digital host the brand owns outright.

One creative direction runs through all five. The people who retouch the hero frame also finish the fiftieth variant, and that is the only reason the long tail still reads as the brand and not a faded photocopy of it.

A wide editorial shot of two Chinese designers at a daylit table in a lived-in Shanghai studio, four laptop screens lined up showing the Douyin For You feed, the Ocean Engine creative library, a Douyin Shop livestream and a KOC review video, one per service lane.
Five lanes, one creative direction

One brief, five lanes, every placement. The same studio finishes all of it, which is how sixty cuts a concept still read as one brand, and how a short-form video gets from brief to first cut inside forty-eight hours.

0 Lanes we ship Content, ad creative, UGC, live, avatar
0+ Cuts per concept From one signed-off master
0h Brief to first cut On short-form Douyin video

The work, defined

Five lanes, one brand line.

A phone held in both hands, the screen filled with the vertical Douyin For You feed, the right-side icon rail of profile photo, heart, comment and share visible alongside the spinning circular music disc.
Content surface

Surface

Content. The For You feed, handled.

Short-form video for the For You feed, written and shot by the studio.

We handle the organic side of a Douyin account from script to final cut: product demos that hold the viewer past the first second, lifestyle videos that match the rest of the brand book, explainer pieces on a weekly schedule, and trend formats caught while the trend is still worth catching. Everything runs vertical and sound-on, because that is how the feed plays it.

A creative director signs off every cut. The same retoucher who finished the campaign hero finishes these. Captions get written in Mandarin from scratch, not pushed through a translation tool, and every file ships in the 9:16 the feed expects. The idea is to add volume without letting the brand drift.

In scope

  • Product demos
  • Lifestyle video
  • Explainer cuts
  • Trend formats
  • Vertical 9:16
  • Hook-first edits
  • Sound-on mix
  • Always-on calendar
A wide monitor showing the Ocean Engine creative library, a grid of vertical In-Feed and TopView ad cuts lined up in the placement preview panel.
Ad creative surface

Surface

Ad creative. Built for Ocean Engine.

Paid creative, made at the volume Ocean Engine's auction rewards.

Ocean Engine learns faster when it has more creative to test, so volume here is not a vanity number, it is how the buying works. We brief, generate and finish paid creative around whatever placements the media team is buying: In-Feed video, TopView, Search, Shop cards. We build the format range dynamic creative needs, and we name the files the way the reporting downstream expects to find them.

Conversion video, full-screen TopView, Search units, DOU+ boosts, Branded Effects: all of it goes through one studio pass. That is what keeps cut number forty looking like the hero instead of a washed-out copy of it.

In scope

  • In-Feed video
  • TopView
  • Search ads
  • DOU+ boosts
  • Shop cards
  • Branded Effects
  • Hook A/B testing
  • Retargeting cuts
A phone screen showing a vertical Douyin video of a creator filming a product review in a sunlit room, the For You icon rail and the caption overlay visible in the interface.
UGC surface

Surface

UGC. KOC-style, at studio scale.

KOC-style video for the feed, minus the casting calls and the rights negotiations.

We make the full range of creator-style content: reviews, hauls, unboxings, GRWM, founder testimonials, reaction cuts. The briefs read like creator briefs, and the footage has the handheld feel to match, shaky in the right places. Captions are native Mandarin. Because it is finished in the studio, the brand owns the masters and the usage rights from the first export, with nobody to renegotiate with later.

And the volume is the whole point. Thirty KOC cuts for a single launch. Ten fresh hooks a week on an always-on account. Separate edits for separate markets. The first cut costs what it costs; by the tenth, the per-cut number is barely worth tracking.

In scope

  • KOC reviews
  • Hauls
  • Unboxing
  • GRWM cuts
  • Testimonials
  • Reaction edits
  • Native Mandarin
  • Always-on UGC
A phone screen showing a Douyin Shop livestream, floating heart animations rising up the frame and a product card pinned in the lower corner with a shopping cart icon.
Live commerce surface

Surface

Live commerce. The look of a shoppable stream.

The visual production behind a Douyin Shop livestream: the set, the graphics, the segments.

We build the visual side of a Douyin Shop livestream. Not the operations of running one, the look of it. That means set design and dressing, the on-screen overlays and lower-thirds, a script for each product-showcase segment, the shoppable card creative, and the replay cut down into short-form once the stream is over.

Most brand livestreams on Douyin still look like a folding table in a stockroom. This one should not. A digital host from the avatar lane can run it, or a human host can work from a studio run-of-show. The on-screen look holds either way.

In scope

  • Livestream sets
  • Segment scripts
  • On-screen overlays
  • Product cards
  • Shop integration
  • Replay cut-downs
  • Run-of-show
  • Always-on lives
A phone screen showing a vertical Douyin video of a digital host presenting to camera, captions and the For You icon rail visible in the interface.
Avatar surface

Surface

Avatar. A digital host the brand owns.

A custom digital host that works only on your channels, in any language Douyin reaches.

We build and train digital hosts a brand owns outright. A founder's twin. A brand presenter. A product expert. A separate cast for each market, when a market needs its own face. The host talks to camera in short-form, runs the Shop livestream, and walks through shopping clips.

The lip-sync holds up close. The look stays on-brand. And the rights are yours, for good. Refreshing the host does not mean another shoot, and adding a language does not mean another casting call.

In scope

  • Digital host
  • Founder twin
  • Product expert
  • Livestream host
  • Multi-language cuts
  • Localized casts
  • Shop hosts
  • Always-on avatar

Contact sheet

Selected frames.

Stills from For You feed, TopView and livestream work, all of it through the studio pipeline. Every frame was built for the surface it runs on, not resized to fit.

A vertical phone held in soft window light, the screen filled with a Douyin For You video of a styled product scene in warm tones, the right-side icon rail and bottom navigation bar visible.
Content · For You feed
A phone screen showing a full-screen Douyin TopView ad at app open, a paused fashion frame with a call-to-action button visible in the lower interface.
Ad creative · TopView
A phone screen showing a vertical Douyin video of a creator holding a product to camera in a sunlit bedroom, the caption overlay and the like-comment-share rail visible in the interface.
UGC · KOC review
A phone held vertically showing a Douyin Shop livestream, a host gesturing toward a product, floating heart animations rising up the frame and a pinned product card with a shopping cart icon.
Live commerce · Shop livestream
A phone screen showing a vertical Douyin video of a digital host presenter speaking to camera in neutral knitwear, captions and the For You icon rail visible in the interface.
Avatar · Digital host
A Chinese producer at a wide reference monitor in a Shanghai studio showing the Ocean Engine creative library, five columns of vertical Douyin cuts tagged Content, Ads, UGC, Live and Avatar.
A close cinematic detail of a hand holding a phone vertically against a soft cream background, the screen filled with a vertical Douyin video including the right-side icon rail and bottom navigation of the For You interface.
1 brief Five lanes, every placement, every market

Partnership

Authored creative, AI volume.

The brands pulling ahead on Douyin in 2026 are not the ones with the biggest tool stack. They are the ones who run a creative process worth the name, with AI carrying the volume inside it.

We sit between the technical side and the creative side. There are directors, retouchers and colorists in the building, and there are AI engineers and a LoRA-training pipeline in the same building. Every cut carries the discipline of the hero frame, because the same people approve it.

  • Private GPU infra
  • NDA & DPA
  • EU AI Act
  • Data sovereignty

Everything runs on private infrastructure. Hosting sits in mainland China, Hong Kong, the EU or the US, depending on where your data is allowed to live. The LoRA models trained on your brand stay yours, and you can take them with you if you ever walk.

Some brands hand us all five lanes. Others hand us one. Both work.

How a Douyin campaign runs

One brief,
every placement.

A feed video, a TopView spot, a livestream, an avatar cut: different formats, same five steps. But the campaign is mostly decided in the first two of them, well before anything goes live.

The first two steps decide the campaign. The other three carry it out.

A creative director and a brand lead at a studio table in a lived-in Shanghai office, tea mugs and sticky notes around a laptop showing the Ocean Engine planner beside printed Douyin For You feed screenshots.
Where it is won

Discovery and brief.

One working session, long enough to settle the goal, the audience, which Douyin surfaces are in scope, what the brand actually stands for, and what it cannot be seen doing. You leave with a one-page brief and an asset map broken out by placement and by lane.

A storyboard wall in a Shanghai studio with five columns of frame sketches labeled Content, Ads, UGC, Live and Avatar, each column anchored by a printed phone mock of the vertical Douyin feed.
Where it is won

Creative direction, lane by lane.

References locked, tone set, shot list drafted. We pick the AI and digital-host models surface by surface. Each lane gets its own treatment rather than one look stretched five ways. This is the step that makes a campaign yours and hard to copy.

A Chinese motion designer at a calibrated workstation in a cluttered Shanghai studio, the main monitor showing a single vertical Douyin video frame, the side panel showing the Ocean Engine creative library grid of cuts.
The rest is execution

Generation and an authored finish.

Now the generation runs, lane by lane, across the surfaces we agreed on. Nothing reaches a media plan until it has been through the studio retouch, a brand check, and a compliance read against Douyin rules.

A Chinese media buyer at a daylit studio desk in Shanghai, the calibrated monitor showing the Ocean Engine campaign dashboard with In-Feed and TopView placements live.
The rest is execution

Launch, per placement and market.

The media team gets the assets in the formats Ocean Engine actually serves: right ratios, right durations, named for In-Feed, TopView and Search. The naming is built so the reporting afterward reads clearly instead of turning into a guessing game.

A Chinese colorist at a calibrated grading suite in a Shanghai studio, the reference monitor showing a warm vertical Douyin video frame paused on a product still, the For You icon rail visible at the screen edge.
The rest is execution

Adapt, refresh, follow the trend.

With the hero approved, new cuts land in days rather than weeks: a different audience, a trend worth chasing, a seasonal angle. The brief does not change much. The library just keeps growing.

Five lanes, one studio. Content is organic short-form video for the For You feed: demos, lifestyle, explainers, trend formats. Ad creative is In-Feed, TopView, Search and Shop-card work for Ocean Engine. UGC is KOC-style reviews and hauls, made at volume. Live commerce is the on-screen production for a Douyin Shop livestream. Avatar is a digital host the brand owns. The five share one creative direction and one finishing pass, which is the only reason the cheap-to-make long tail still looks like the hero.

We write the brief, build the creator profile, shoot the takes in the studio, and finish them to the same standard as the hero. It comes out with the loose handheld feel of creator video, product-in-hand frames, and captions written in Mandarin from scratch instead of translated. No casting cycle, no chasing usage rights after the fact. You own the masters and the rights from the first export. When a campaign genuinely needs a named creator and their following, that is a media buy you run next to this lane, not a replacement for it, and we will say so when that is the case.

We build and train a host the brand owns: a founder twin, a brand presenter, a product expert, or a small cast when different markets need different faces. The host speaks to camera in short-form, fronts the Shop livestream, and narrates shopping clips. Lip-sync holds up at close range, the look stays on-brand, and the same host works in every language Douyin reaches without a reshoot. It never turns up on another company account, because it was trained on your material and nobody else.

The visual production for a Douyin Shop livestream, not the running of it. We design and dress the set, build the overlays and lower-thirds, script each product segment, produce the shoppable card creative, and cut the replay into short-form once it is over. The aim is a stream that looks like the brand book, not a card table in a stockroom. A digital host from the avatar lane can front it, or a person can host it from the run-of-show we write.

The hero concept gets approved once, in the direction step. After that, every cut in every lane goes through the same retouch, the same color grade, the same brand-safety check. Honestly, that finishing pass is the whole product. It is what keeps content, ad creative, UGC, live and avatar reading as one campaign instead of five that happened to ship the same month.

Short-form video for a brand we already know can go from brief to first cut in 24 to 72 hours. One hero shoot or AI sprint creates the master, and the variants follow over the next few days, audience by audience. A new brand or a new product needs a one-time setup first, to lock the treatment, the LoRA models and the digital host. After that, three to five posts a week at production quality is a normal pace, not a stretch one.

Every engagement is scoped to the brief, so there is no per-asset price list to quote here. What moves the number is the lane mix, the volume you need each month, and whether we are building new models and a digital host or working from ones that already exist. Media spend on Ocean Engine is separate and stays with the media team. Send the brief and a scope plus an indicative range comes back, usually inside two days.

Yes, on the creative side. We brief the ad creative lane around whatever the media team is buying: In-Feed video, TopView, Search ads, DOU+ boosts, Shop cards, Branded Effects. The cuts come in the format range dynamic creative needs, named so the reporting downstream makes sense. The media team owns the buying and the budget. We own the work that runs in the slots.

Every output goes through a studio retouch: dodge and burn, grain, a little chromatic aberration at the edges, a color grade in Lightroom or Capture One. Our image style guide bans the usual giveaways, the poreless skin, the identical bokeh, the melted jewelry, the text that is almost but not quite words. A person reviews the final file before any media plan sees it. That review is the difference between an AI image and a campaign image, and it is not optional.

Yes. A good share of our Douyin work ships under agency brands, white-labeled, with the collaboration kept confidential. The agency holds the client relationship and runs the communication. We are the production capacity behind it, and we are content to stay invisible.

You do. All finished assets, all masters, and any LoRA, fine-tuned or digital-host model trained on your IP. Commercial-use rights for the AI outputs come through enterprise tiers that grant commercial use. For the legal detail, our Copyright and AI guide lays it out.

Try us

Send the Douyin brief.
Back in 48 hours.

You get a placement-by-placement recommendation, a scope outline, a rough timeline, and a few For You or TopView frames on us, so you can judge the thinking before any budget is on the line.