The social media landscape is ever-changing, and the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold the ban of TikTok in the U.S. and then delay it has sent ripples through the advertising world. With 170 million Americans using the platform, its possible exit would create a significant shift, and the $12 billion in ad spend (eMarketer) from 2024 is up for grabs.
The impact of a potential TikTok exit
TikTok's rise to fame has been meteoric, disrupting how we think about content and community. It encouraged us to dance through a global pandemic and ignited a booming creator economy. For advertisers, TikTok became a major player, ranking fourth in ad revenues, behind only Google, Meta, and Amazon.
The potential exit of TikTok is a major shakeup for the advertising world. However, it’s not a time to panic, but rather a time to adapt.
Where will the ad dollars go?
The big question is: where will TikTok’s user base and ad dollars be absorbed? Will it be Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts, or perhaps another platform? There isn't going to be a direct replacement for TikTok. Instead, advertisers should be prepared to adopt a platform agnostic approach.
Reach:
While TikTok has a large US reach of 170 million users, YouTube has a larger reach at 192 million, and Instagram has 126 million. Understanding your audience's core stack will guide your decisions.
Targeting:
Each social platform has unique data and targeting approaches. Advertisers need to learn what each platform does best to connect with their community. Consider using signals from outside social media such as CTV, Video and OOH.
TikTok gets their data from user video engagement and has been at the forefront of the “Social Search” movement - ensuring targeting options help advertisers better reach audiences interested and in-market for various products and services! Audiences lose the Purchase Intent, Video Behavioral and Creator targeting that made them so powerful.
Instagram is backed by Meta’s long standing dominance across it’s family of apps - making them one of the most powerful and scalable spaces to reach your audience. When brands pivot to Instagram they gain a world of data and context that other social environments simply don’t have - and their custom audience options and scale make the variety of possible targeting much stronger for low funnel goals with Interests, Demographics (Such as relationship status, education, employment), and more! This targeting taps into both passive audiences as TikTok would and more active prospective customers through powerful retargeting.
YouTube’s major advantage and strength for advertisers is backed by Google’s massive dominance over the Search landscape and their data powered by the Google Play store. Targeting options here are influenced by how users are actively researching and how immersed they are in longer form video content. You have the most flexibility to reach almost any niche and subset of audience via YouTube while ensuring they are backed by the intent to drive ROI for your brand via their In-Market audiences, Affinity targeting, Detailed Demographics, and Custom Web or App based options advertisers gain.
Creative:
What performs well on one platform will not necessarily translate well to another. TikTok's success is based on the feeling of authenticity. You can't always copy and paste content from TikTok to other spaces. Instead, advertisers should embrace how each user likes to engage on a platform.
TikTok completely reshaped how brands approach creative and showed just how closely influenced creator first storytelling would be in driving performance. In considering how creative can translate:
Instagram and the Reels environment to-date is home to cross-posting and adapting TikTok content. However audiences here are much more tolerant to brand focused content that relies less heavily on creators. Beyond the 9:16 on Instagram you’ll also be able to tap into other inventory and optimize 1:1’s and meet audiences in various environments beyond the doomscroll TikTok is so notorious for.
YouTube Shorts plays by the same rules as TikTok and is the most accepting of quickly repurposed content. That being said - YouTube as a channel also draws opportunity for users to be engaged in longer form content by default - thus leaning into opportunities to balance short & deeper education and storytelling styles!
Performance:
How success is measured can be different for each platform. A "share" may have different implications than a completed view on different platforms. Make sure you are measuring against real ROI metrics.
“TikTok Made Me Buy It” showcased the power of how strong video performance can correlate with downstream ROI. Many TikTokers and their performance, however, was less dependent on direct attribution and instead, in-app engagement, VCR and Comments + Sharing was a powerful way to measure media performance rather than outbound traffic!
Instagram should be measured a bit differently to help ensure success when migrating here. Instagram Head Adam Mosseri recently pointed to Shares and Send Rates as a strong indicator of incremental reach and performance against other options. Instagram also does drive much stronger outbound CTR and direct conversion attribution - thus you’re truly able to depend on a full funnel suite of KPIs and tactics running here.
YouTube on the other hand - is much more similar to TikTok is that it interacts with users as a destination in itself - users go here for the answer, more than they come here for discovery to learn more elsewhere! This means prioritizing in-app video and engagement metrics will be the best correlated with downstream ROI. Shorts in particular is not a strong VCR tactic but rather helps achieve reach and can be powerful in inspiring conversion.
Key takeaways for advertisers:
- Stay agile: Be open to testing across multiple platforms. Be prepared to adjust quickly to a changing landscape.
- Embrace individuality: Understand how each platform is unique and cater to how its users interact. Don't copy TikTok content to YouTube or other platforms.
- Find your community: Speak with your audience, not at them. Strengthen targeting using native engagement signals and data from other channels.
- Don't panic: With TikTok gone, there are other avenues to continue reaching your audience. The key is to be strategic and adaptable.
MiQ’s TikTok migration package:
MiQ is ready to help advertisers navigate this transition through its TikTok Migration Package. We provide a partner-agnostic approach, offering custom analysis to guide your next steps.
Our services include:
- Planning: Developing a strategic media plan with details on how to reach your audience on YouTube and Instagram
- Activation: Providing fully managed execution across YouTube and Instagram, including trafficking and optimizations
- Measurement: Analyzing campaign performance and comparing it to historical TikTok campaign data
Times like these remind us why diversifying your content and paid media strategies is critical. Allowing engagement to drive your brand's response, will ensure you succeed in this evolving landscape.
Data sources used:
- Reach Stats: US Adult Users - Sourced EMarketer with exception of:
TikTok - US Reach- Sourced TikTok - Creative: Google Ads - YouTube Shorts ABCDs Summary - Creative, 2024
- Performance: EMarketer - Time Spent by US Adults on Social Platforms, 2024
- Performance: IPSOS x TikTok: Return on Creative Whitepaper
