[Source - TikTok Marketing] TikTok Marketing connector silently drops Smart+ ads missing a modify_time

[lukewatters-airbyte]

Problem

When syncing the ads stream from the TikTok Marketing connector, Smart+ Ad records are silently excluded whenever the TikTok API returns them without a modify_time value. The sync completes successfully with no errors or warnings, so there's no indication that data is missing. This means tracking URL fields (impression_tracking_url, click_tracking_url, landing_page_url, etc.) for these ads never make it to the destination, even though the TikTok API does return this data and the connector's schema supports these fields.

Proposed Solution

Rather than dropping records that lack a modify_time, the connector should still sync them — using a fallback cursor value (e.g. create_time) or another approach that doesn't discard the record outright. At minimum, dropped records should be logged so users are aware data is being excluded.

Who benefits

Any user syncing the TikTok Marketing ads stream who runs Smart+ (Smart Performance) campaigns, since these ads are more likely to return without a modify_time.

Additional context

This behavior has been present since connector v4.8.1 and is still present in v5.1.2. It stems from a filter added to work around a cursor issue, which had the side effect of dropping affected records entirely instead of syncing them safely.

[Airbyte Support Bot (airbyte-support-bot)]

Hi lukewatters-airbyte, thank you for the detailed write-up on this!

We can confirm that the ads stream does include a RecordFilter that excludes records where modify_time is not present. This filter was introduced in PR #65602 to prevent cursor comparison failures during incremental syncs, since the stream uses modify_time as its cursor field. The trade-off is that Smart+ ad records returned by the TikTok API without a modify_time value are silently excluded from sync results.

Your suggestion of using a fallback cursor value (such as create_time) is a reasonable approach that could allow these records to be synced without breaking incremental sync behavior.

We've escalated this to our engineering team for investigation. We'll update this discussion once we have more information.

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[Airbyte Support Bot (airbyte-support-bot)]

This issue is being tracked internally: https://github.com/airbytehq/oncall/issues/13043