With a ban or forced sale of TikTok looming, the KOSE, team has been focused on the marketing implications for advertisers. Despite its uncertain future, TikTok still has an important role for businesses looking to extend the reach of their campaigns.

 

Should brands continue to use the platform?

Although the future of the platform is uncertain, users are still on TikTok consuming and creating content. That makes TikTok a great channel for building brand awareness, especially considering that people are using it to replace other social and search platforms. In fact, the NYTimes reported that “For Gen Z, TikTok Is the New Search Engine” finding that Gen Z prefers TikTok to Google because it’s easy to quickly watch review videos and use comments to verify their choices.  When we look at site analytics and review traffic sent from TikTok to a website, we often find that it is the media channel most likely to bring new visitors to a website. This makes it a great addition to your upper funnel awareness and traffic driving campaigns.

An additional factor to consider is the cost of producing content for TikTok. When evaluating costs, it’s important to remember that its primary ad format, vertical video, is easily repurposed. This format can be used on other platforms like YouTube Shorts. According to Emarketer, this is the media channel poised to gain the most from a TikTok ban.  As a platform, YouTube Shorts usage has grown from 30 Billion Daily Views in Q1 of 2022 to 50 Billion Daily Views in Q4 2023.

 

What risk are brands assuming if the platform is banned and a buyer is not identified?

There are two risk areas to consider when marketing on TikTok in the upcoming year.

1. Follower Loss: Brands who have built a large following are at risk of losing their community of followers if the platform is banned. To mitigate, we recommend cross-promoting on your other social channels to reduce the risk of follower loss.
2. Resources: Since it’s an evolving platform with emerging Ad Tech, it takes time to set up and manage campaigns. If you’re considering building new lower-funnel campaigns on TikTok, we encourage brands to exercise caution. Examples of lower-funnel campaigns include campaigns where revenue, leads, or conversion counts are the primary goal. Because TikTok’s future is uncertain, marketers should consider if the time, energy and technical resources needed to configure custom conversion tracking are likely to yield a positive ROI in the next year.

How are content creators reacting to TikTok’s uncertain future?

The foundation of TikTok is both its “sticky” algorithm but also that it invested heavily in content creators in the early days of the platform. So the people most impacted by a future ban will be the creators themselves. Epidemic Sound conducted a study of 1,000 TikTok content creators to understand how TikTok’s uncertain future is changing their business plans. Their findings show that creators are proactively shifting their focus to other social media platforms. According to their study, “Among those who consider TikTok to be an extremely or very important part of their current social media strategy, 49% have already started expanding their presence on other platforms, and 21.1% intend to follow suit soon.”

 

If brands don’t want to invest in TikTok, what are their alternatives?

At the present time, YouTube seems the best alternative based on reach to the TikTok core demo.  In addition, YouTube Shorts placements are able to repurpose the vertical video content. According to Digiday, if TikTok is removed, “Small business owners said they would invest more in Instagram (52%), YouTube (42%), their company website/SEO (38%), Facebook (33%) and email marketing (25%).”

Assuming a buyer is found, what signs and signals should brands look for to determine if TikTok should play a bigger role in their marketing plan?

Above all, we’ll be carefully following a few key user metrics if the platform is purchased.  We are most interested in determining if TikTok’s able to maintain its high levels of engagement and its active user base.  Therefore the data we are most interested in tracking includes:

• TikTok avg user engagement
• TikTok active users
• TikTok activity/traffic/sales
• Panel based data (Simmons) on usage and attitudes towards the platform.

Curious about how to evolve your media mix and navigate these uncertain waters? Our media experts are here to help. Complete this form today to connect with our experts. 

 

Resources

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/16/technology/gen-z-tiktok-search-engine.html

https://www.emarketer.com/content/tiktok-gets-banned-where-brand-ad-spend-go

https://www.epidemicsound.com/blog/the-future-of-the-creator-economy-report-2024/

https://digiday.com/media-buying/media-buying-briefing-agencies-debate-biggest-questions-over-tiktoks-future/