ON TIKTOK AND ADVERTISING; THE FASTEST GROWING SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORM OF ALL TIME
TikTok- named as the fastest growing social media platform of all time, making the shortlist as one of the most downloaded apps globally for the past two years.
The short-form video app saw rapid growth during the COVID pandemic, as many users found time to explore the platform and connect with their online audiences in new ways.
In Q1 2020, TikTok set the record for the most downloads in a single quarter for a social app, at 315 million installs. And as of January 2021, the platform boasts a reported 689 million global active users.
The TikTok app is opened an average of eight times daily and those viewers spend an average of 52 minutes per day looking at user-generated videos of all sorts of human behaviour, challenges, and entertaining performances.
TikTok can be an unbeatable advertising investment. The platform allows e-commerce brands to remain visible and present within the always-watching customer lifestyle.
According to the E-Commerce Times, big brands like Amazon and Walmart are seeing a great sales surge from TikTok. For example, currently the hashtag Walmart Finds has over one billion views. At the same time, hashtag Amazon Finds has more than 11 billion views.
The uniqueness of TikTok powers much of its potential as an advertising platform. Three factors make TikTok so popular and enable it to draw in massive amounts viewers to see ads, according to
Charles King, principal analyst at Pund-IT, says Tiktok is able to draw in massive amounts of veiwers to see ads because, "First and foremost are its usersOver half of them are reportedly teens to 29 years of age. That is a prime audience for advertisers because many people in that age range are sensitive to current/emerging trends.
That target audience is rapidly expanding to include Gen Zers, who are becoming the primary video creators as well.
There are plenty of examples as to how Tiktok is growing to fit in advertising, over the past few months alone.
IT WAS AN OFFICIAL GLOBAL SPONSOR OF THE UEFA EURO 2020.
In the digital world, this is an exciting partnership because it’s the first time a digital entertainment platform has partnered with the UEFA EURO. But along with the statistics from the last year, this partnership just makes sense; leaving TikTok to present itself as the ideal platform for fans and players to share their passion during the important football event- it was a clever move.
And the partnership worked wellthe hashtag #Football has grown to more than 140 billion views in only tend days, double the 70B when the partnership was announced in early February. There are now over 800 football labelled accounts and #TikTokEURO2020 & #EURO2020 already have over 4.6 billion video views combined since February. Tiktok also Launched 60+ EURO related hashtags.
SPARK ADS
On the fast-moving social platform where the short-form nature of content is a key selling point, the interruptive nature of advertisements can feel like a big obstacle for users. To avoid that, and to capitalise on some of the strengths of the app, TikTok launched its new global native advertising format-Spark Ads.
The format allows brands to boost the profile of existing organic content, with the aim of converting the app’s users into both co-creators of the ads themselves and ultimately consumers.
TikTok stressed that by bringing in the TikTok community, the format avoids the interruptive nature of many native formats: “With Spark Ads, brands can build long-lasting connections that are authentic and rooted in community while also delivering sustainable and impactful business value.”
It launched with a campaign in partnership with Costa Coffee, which drove over 42m impressions at just a £1.39 CPM. This translated into a 159% increase in followers, (or 18,000 new fans).
Overall, Spark Ads is in service of bringing brands into the creative conversations TikTok’s users have on the platform.
TIKTOK TEAMS UP WITH SHOPIFY
Shopify, the e-commerce platform, claims that between February 2020 and February 2021, installs across Shopify’s existing social commerce channels increased by 76%.
With the pandemic challenges persisting and going back to normal coming any time soon, social commerce will continue to be a driver of growth essential to the industry for the foreseeable future.
But with this growth, who better to team up with than another fast growing platform? You guessed it- Tiktok.
TikTok Shopping, was announced last month, making Shopify the first commerce platform to link with the quickly growing social video network. This partnership boosts the social commerce landscape, a market projected to bring in up to $36 billion in revenue this year in the U.S. alone.
“By enabling new in-app shopping experiences and product discovery on TikTok for the first time, Shopify is powering the creator economy on one of the fastest-growing social and entertainment platforms in the world,” said Shopify President Harley Finkelstein in a statement. “We are excited to help this next generation of entrepreneurs connect with their audiences in more ways, with TikTok as a visionary partner.”
The new in-app shopping experience will let Shopify merchants connect with their TikTok profiles to create a mini-storefront for consumers, but not only this- While the TikTok Shopping experience provides a new channel for Shopify merchants to sell, it also gives creators an opportunity to monetize their own content on TikTok.
Product links in TikTok Shopping will also be available to tag products in organic TikTok posts, enabling any video watcher to shop directly from the platform.
One of the first businesses that will participate in TikTok Shopping is Kylie Cosmetics, a social-driven e-commerce beauty line started by Kylie Jenner.
In order to meet customers where they are, digital marketers are now trying to close the distance between social content and buying. Social media platforms like TikTok are where consumers are exposed to new products through discovery and “authentic” pitches by influencers. The TikTok Shopping experience will allow marketers to close the gap even further on a platform with hundreds of millions of active users.