TikTok: the new social kid on the block

Of late, all roads are leading to TikTok in social. TikTok is hyped up as the next big social platform. Its owned by Chinese company ByteDance and gained its popularity in 2018 after becoming the world’s most downloaded iOS app.

So, what is TikTok?

In a nutshell TikTok is a mobile app for creating and sharing short 15-second music videos. Its claims to be the go-to place for real, fun, raw video story telling. Its less of an airbrush app (although it has enough filters) but it’s a more of a ‘come as you are’ platform. Creativity is at its core, so it comes full loaded with tools for users to easily upload and edit their videos and share their creativity with the world. Using AI to analyse users interests and preferences through their interactions, it displays a personalized content feed to each user.

Its Evolution

2016 Douyin was created & launched by ByteDance in China
2017 already had 100 million users & boasted of 1 billion daily video views
2017 Sept, Douyin branded as TikTok for international markets
2017 Nov Douyin bought Musical.ly
2018 Aug Musical.ly merged with TikTok
2018 Oct TikTok surpassed YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat & Facebook in app rank
2018 December, launched its first marketing campaign in the UK
2019 Jan began testing ads in UK & other EU markets

User Growth & Brand Safety

Globally is has over 800 million downloads and 500 million active monthly users. In January UK monthly active users were at 3.7 million. There are no shared download figures for Ireland just yet but looking at Google Trends you can easily see interest in TikTok matches global trends, which is continuously on the high.

In a research carried out by Digiday last month, client-side Marketers expressed real concern about brand safety on TikTok. This is not surprising as its typical of platforms whose business model is based on UGC and don’t have mature advertising frameworks yet. However, this hasn’t prevented other advertisers from diving right in. I took a look at the advertising on the app, it appeared really messy as brands are currently lifting and shifting video assets on to the platform (e.g. landscape video ads, some with subtitles). Like on Instagram, the opportunity is there to create vertical video that will work well on the platform and fit in with the creativity theme which TikTok champions.

What does this mean for you & our clients?

Advertising on TikTok could work well for certain brands and definitely not for others. Brand safety would be a huge stumbling block for some clients. You can access the app inventory via the Facebook Audience Network, the same way you can access Tinder. Here are some ad placements featured in a recent Advertising pitch deck shared in the UK.