Brands Shift Towards TikTok at the Expense of its Rivals

TikTok has captivated the interest of brands and advertisers with over 850 million global users. Beyond brand awareness and engagement, TikTok's immersive full-screen, sound-on formats, as well as its diverse video content and community, offer massive potential for brands.

Regardless of growing economic or political tensions between the United States and China, TikTok continues to dominate people's attention.

According to several media agencies and advertisers, there has been a steady rise of around 20% in TikTok ad spending between the first three quarters of 2022 and the final one. Many claim that this trend of TikTok investment will continue to surge.

Ad dollars typically decamp to tried and tested areas such as Facebook and Instagram, where marketers know they will be effective. TikTok, a relatively new platform, isn't yet an essential option.

But, after Apple's privacy policy changes, the effectiveness of the most established platforms does not always vindicate the investment. TikTok, for the most part, continues to avoid the same problems.

According to a study conducted last year by Creatopy, an ad design platform, the same video advertised across multiple platforms received nearly three times more impressions on TikTok than on Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts, both short-form video features. The latter, on the other hand, had higher levels of user engagement with the content.

Insider Intelligence predicts that global ad spending will increase 10.5% year on year to $626.86 billion in 2023, up from $567.49 billion in 2018. The figure is expected to soar to $835.82 billion by 2026.

The competition in the ad market is fierce, and marketers keep on exploring and experimenting.

TikTok has quickly started to move out of the “experimental” bucket and is now becoming a staple of the social media mix.

The quick emergence of TikTok caused rivals like Meta and Google to launch their own short-form video offerings such as Instagram’s Reels and YouTube’s Shorts.

TikTok is rapidly becoming a major focus in many advertisers' media plans. Marketers are evidently shifting their digital ad spend from other social media platforms like Meta, Google, and Twitter to TikTok.

However, when compared to the amount of data insights provided to advertisers by competitors such as Google, TikTok's ad capabilities fell short of those of its larger and older rivals. There is still a lot of room for improvements.

On the other hand, this short-form social media platform has also been sparking the attention of global regulators due to security concerns.

It remains to be seen what TikTok will do to overcome the analytical shortcomings and bring security concerns under control.

But, overall, TikTok has well established its efficacy in recent years. Undoubtedly, it has grown from a nice-to have to a have-to-have platform for marketers to promote their services, grow their audience, and increase their ROI through targeted ad campaigns.