The latest social phenomenon is TikTok, a Chinese iOS and Android social media video app. TikTok launched in 2017 but did not gain popularity until 2018. It is available in 150 markets and in 75 languages.
With over 800 million monthly active users, I thought it would be worth doing a dive into the latest social media phenomenon.
Wikipedia describes TikTok as a social media video app for creating and sharing short lip-sync, comedy and talent videos.
It allows users to create short form videos between 3 and 15 seconds long, they often feature music in the background, and can be sped up, slowed down, and edited with a filter.
It is largely popular among Gen Z and millennials with 66% of the users are younger than 30. However, a large number of high profile figures have also jumped on the TikTok wagon, such as: Will Smith, Ariana Grande, Cardi B and Khloe Kardashian.
It is owned by parent company ByteDance, who launched ‘Douyin’ in China in 2016, before launching TikTok internationally in 2017. TikTok is not available in China due to censorship restrictions, but both Douyin and TikTok are believed to be the same.
In November 2017, ByteDance also bought Musical.ly (TikTok’s closest competitor) and merged the two apps in August 2018 to make one giant video community.
More importantly for us, is the advertising opportunities, with the increased talk-ability on how to reach Gen Z – with 66% of TikTok users under 30, this would be an obvious choice of platform.
In Q2 2019, TikTok launched its managed service platform. This means you can bid on ad space but still requires reps to run them, not self-service like Facebook and Instagram.
Currently, advertising is not available in NZ, but we would expect it to be rolled out at some point. To prepare for this, here is an overview of what is currently available in 13 markets.
There are 3 promotional objectives:
- App install
- Traffic
- Conversion
There are also a few different ad types:
- Brand takeovers
- In-feed ads
- Hashtag challenges
- Branded lens
- Top View
Much like other platforms there are various targeting opportunities, such as;
- Gender
- Age
- Location
- Language
- Operating system
- Network type
- Interest (testing)
- Custom Audience
Although it all sounds exciting and we love a new social phenomenon, in its short space of existence there have been some concerns with privacy. People often do not consider where apps originate from so I feel it is important to highlight TikTok’s history and issues in its short space of existence.
TikTok originates from China. Chinese companies have been under the spotlight recently due to concerns on privacy and surveillance, and TikTok is no different.
TikTok were fined $5.7million dollars by the US in Feb 2019 after illegally collecting Musical.ly information from children under 13 without parental consent during the merger of the two apps.
Claudia Biancotti, from Peterson Institute of International Economics, wrote a very interesting article on the risks of Chinese Social Media. Here she shares extracts from TikTok’s privacy policy which state, for the USA and EU, data may be transferred to China. This is legal as long as users give their consent (maybe we should start reading those privacy policies). Although, in the last few weeks the USA have just launched a national security review because they are concerned that data will be shared with the Chinese Communist Party.
I will leave it here for you to decide whether you want to download TikTok (you can watch and search videos without logging in), and if you think any of your clients should be advertising on the latest phenomenon (when it becomes more accessible in New Zealand).
