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Cloned, not owned: TikTok hosts its first big ad event and hits 1B users

Wednesday, September 29, 2021 by Snacks
_Ordering 246th pair of viral TikTok leggings [Kelvin Murray/Stone via Getty Images]_

Ordering 246th pair of viral TikTok leggings [Kelvin Murray/Stone via Getty Images]

Say "seamless" again.... Yesterday, TikTok hosted its first-ever "TikTok World" event to inspire brands and "TikTok For Business" clients to spend more ad bucks. TikTok is still the least trusted major social platform, and draws less than $1.3B in estimated annual US ad sales, versus $48B for Facebook and Insta. That’s why it introduced #seamless new marketing tools, including an automated system that matches advertisers with creators, better ad-targeting tools, and deeper insights on content reach. The Tok also intro'd new shopping features with partners like Shopify and Square.

  • TikTok is becoming increasingly important to marketers. 71% of users believe the biggest trends start on TikTok. Think Aerie's viral leggings and KFC's Hot Chicken.
  • It has hundreds of thousands of advertisers, up from just dozens in 2019. This year the share of users who saw ads on TikTok nearly doubled from last year, to 37%. Last year Chinese parent ByteDance saw its sales more than double from 2019.

Music with a great (algo)rhythm... TikTok had 55M users in January 2018. By December 2018, it had 270M+ users post-Musical.ly merger; a year later, it had 500M. This week TikTok announced it hit 1B+ monthly users, joining FB, Instagram, and YouTube in the elite Billion Social Club. Insta reached the 1B mark in 2018, eight years after launching; it took TikTok less than three. Meanwhile, Twitter and Snap still have fewer than 300M.

THE TAKEAWAY

Cloned, but not owned.... Social giants are trying to replicate TikTok's success with copycats, from Instagram “Reels” to Snap “Spotlight” and YouTube “Shorts.” Despite that, TikTok has continued strong growth and engagement. US users spend 24.5 hours on TikTok each month, and TikTok overtook YouTube this month for average watch time in the US and UK. But it's not all smooth-Toking: US regulatory scrutiny continues, and ByteDance reportedly postponed its IPO plans indefinitely amid China's tech crackdown.

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