Since its launch in 2016, TikTok has taken over the world of social media. The app began as a place where Gen Zers and Millennials could share dance moves and cute videos, and has since evolved into a commercial juggernaut. In 2020, the app earned more than 2 billion downloads worldwide. In 2021, TikTok surpassed google.com to become the most popular website in the world. The app ended 2022 as the most downloaded and the highest grossing app. TikTok has become so important that no marketing team worth its salt can ignore it. TikTok is disrupting its competitors and, along the way, disrupting advertising.
Source: Visual Capitalist
The Search for Authenticity
In the “Digital 2022: Global Overview Report”, the authors found that TikTok had an ad reach of 884.9 million people aged 18 years and older, despite being banned in India. Between October 2021 and January 2022, the app had added 60 million users.
Source: Digital 2022: Global Overview Report
At the heart of this growth is a shift in how people not only consume content, but decide on what products to use. People are increasingly wary of buying products on the basis of an advert or an endorsement by a celebrity. There has been an erosion of trust. To them, there is something inauthentic about ads and endorsements. An incident from a few years ago serves to show just why people have become cynical about traditional advertising: When Gal Gardot tweeted out that she was using the new Huawei Mate, users noticed that she was using an iPhone. People cannot help but ask if celebrities who endorse products are doing so because they are paid to do so, or because they genuinely love those products.
Source: Apple Insider
The TikTok Creative Center observes that TikTok is a much more intimate platform and encourages authenticity. It’s less scripted than traditional platforms. Not only that, whereas traditional marketing was all about pushing a product, TikTok demands that any ads provide entertainment or information first. An old school ad would just not land on TikTok.
Gen Zers and millennials make up 43% of users today. From that group, 32% of Millennials have reduced their time on social media. However, while they have reduced consumption overall, they have become more proactive in curating their content. They tend to spend most of their time on social media on the accounts they find to be the most authentic. Millennials have made themselves loud and clear: they are seeking authentic, and reliable brands. They are not looking for polished content. They understand that influences get paid too, but they want to feel that influencers genuinely love the products they are promoting, and that their content is not part of some giant advertising machine. Rather, they want engaging content, even if, or more precisely, which is imperfect. In the world of TikTok, perfection can be found in imperfection, and perfect ads are imperfect. This is because users expect content to reflect life.
For advertisers, TikTok is a gift. Engagement rates on Instagram, for example, are about 3%, compared to nearly 20% on TikTok. That is what advertisers stand to gain if they play by the rules of TikTok and produce authentic, entertaining, informative, imperfect content.
