Mediastreet
Tag

TikTok

Browsing
In News

Mark Zuckerberg: Walmart Is Coming For Facebook & Instagram Shops

No Comments

By Mark Emem

Walmart and Microsoft’s surprise bid for TikTok is aimed at social commerce, an area Facebook is just starting to explore.

  • Walmart’s surprise bid for TikTok coincided with Facebook unveiling the Shops feature on its main app.
  • The big-box retailer’s experience in China, where social commerce is more advanced, gives it an edge.
  • Walmart’s online ad business stands to benefit, too.

Just days after Facebook (NASDAQ:FB) doubled down on its social commerce ambitions by launching a shopping tab on its main app, Walmart (NYSE:WMT) surprised everyone by partnering with Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) to bid for TikTok.

On the surface, Walmart’s interest in TikTok may seem insane. It is a highly strategic decision and not a random misplaced one, though. To keep growing its e-commerce business, the big-box retailer needs social media channels, and the short-form video app caters to that need.

Unlike with messaging and social networking, social commerce is in relative infancy, and Facebook hasn’t quite sewed up the niche yet. Facebook’s path to achieving its ambitions in this niche becomes more complicated if Walmart and Microsoft’s bid for TikTok is successful.

TikTok
Walmart could prove highly disruptive if it succeeds in acquiring TikTok in a partnership with Microsoft. | @chetanp/Twitter

Why Walmart Wants TikTok

The number of internet users who have bought a product directly via social media platforms has been growing double digits in the last few quarters. Between the fourth quarter of 2018 and the third quarter of 2019, this number rose from 13% to 21%, according to eMarketer.

It is estimated that this category of buyers spends, on average, $300 per year via social media channels.

Social commerce, though, is tiny relative to all online sales. Last year on Cyber Monday, just 2.6% of the $9.2 billion spent online came via social media channels. There’s lots of room for growth, and Walmart wants in on the opportunity early.

China Shows the Way

To get an idea of where social commerce is headed to in the U.S., China offers a good example.

In the world’s second-largest economy, social commerce was worth $186 billion in 2019. It is expected to grow by 30% in 2020 to hit $242 billion.

By acquiring TikTok in partnership with Microsoft, Walmart would have one more digital property on which to serve ads, thereby boosting ad revenues. Currently, Walmart generates less than 1% of its revenues from ads in its brick-and-mortar stores and digital properties.

Walmart’s website draws in approximately 160 million visitors per week. In the U.S., TikTok is estimated to have over 80 million users. Roughly 90% of TikTok users access the video app daily, thereby offering a potentially bigger audience than what Walmart currently enjoys.

Additionally, Walmart wants data on consumers, an invaluable resource in today’s world for any consumer-facing business.

Make Walmart Cool

The average shopper at a Walmart store is a 46-year-old white woman. Compared to Target (NYSE:TGT) and Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN), Walmart is behind in attracting millennials and Generation Z.

About 43% of Target’s shoppers, for instance, were millennials compared to around 35% for Walmart.

Facebook
Walmart rival Target has done a better job at attracting millennials and Generation Z. | Source: Business Insider

As its average shopper continues to age, Walmart needs a younger demographic to balance out.

To attract a younger demographic, the retailer will, of course, have to be where youth spend their time. Owning TikTok is a no-brainer in that regard.

Retailer Throws Facebook a Curveball

If Facebook thought it had the social commerce niche all carved up for itself, Walmart’s ambitions of buying TikTok proves the field is wide open.

For Facebook, it would be worse if Walmart eventually succeeds as this could whet its appetite for other social media properties. Combined with Microsoft’s technological expertise, that would constitute serious competition for Facebook.

As a company that is trying to pivot to e-commerce and payments as an additional revenue stream, Facebook’s social commerce ambitions are unlikely to go as smoothly as it would have wanted.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect the views of CCN.com and should not be considered investment or trading advice from CCN.com. The author holds no investment position in the above-mentioned securities.

Feature Image Credit: Microsoft and Walmart are upping the ante on Facebook in their efforts to acquire TikTok. | Image: REUTERS/Erin Scott/File Photo

By Mark Emem

Sourced from cnn

Read More
By
In News

How to Grow Your Business Using IGTV Marketing

No Comments

By

Looking for a guide to grow your business with IGTV marketing?

Instagram TV (IGTV) can be used by brands to boost their businesses even during the outbreak of COVID-19.

Corporate sales have plunged in the world but there are still chances for your brand to survive. This is easier by using social networks’ marketing features just like IGTV.

Video-sharing platforms are on the rise and almost all social platforms have the ability to share your videos as posts and stories.

In this post, I’m going to introduce IGTV’s usefulness for brands and the ways you can use it to grow your business.

This is particularly useful for the current financial recession we’re suffering in the wake of the coronavirus.

First, it’s good to look at top social media apps/sites/features related to videos to know how different IGTV is. Here are several important video-sharing features on different social networks:

YouTube: The #1 video-sharing platform

YouTube is certainly the top social platform for sharing videos. With up to a whopping 2 billion monthly users, YouTube can provide the greatest audience reach for your video content.

Almost all queries in Google will have several results from YouTube pages. This has made YouTube a great opportunity for video marketing.

This is why many brands try to share their branded videos on YouTube. Learning and entertaining can also be easily provided using both the site and app of YouTube

YouTube video specs

  • Recommended dimensions: 426 x 240 (240p), 640 x 360 (360p), 854 x 480 (480p), 1280 x 720 (720p), 1920 x 1080 (1080p), 2560 x 1440 (1440p) and 3840 x 2160 (2160p)
  • Video length: up to 15 minutes
  • Aspect ratio: 16:9 (auto adds pillar boxing if 4:3)

It should be noted that you can request for longer video length limitation and wait for YouTube confirmation.

YouTube the number one streaming platform IGTV

TikTok: Fastest-growing video-sharing app

TikTok is a Chinese video-sharing service that has recently hit one of the highest installation rates among social networks.

TikTok has almost 800 million active users and a great majority of them are Gen Z. So it’s the best opportunity for drawing the attention of teenagers.

TikTok video specs

  • File size: up to 287.6MB for iOS users and 72MB for Android users
  • Video length: up to 15 seconds
  • Video dimensions: 1080 x 1920
  • Recommended aspect ratios: 9:16, 1:1, or 16:9

TikTok’s video-sharing feature is now accessible only using smartphones, although its web page will show some popular videos.

TikTok the fastest-growing video-sharing app IGTV

Check out this post if you’re looking for the best TikTok tools.

Facebook: The #1 social media platform

Facebook is undoubtedly the largest social media service with around 2.5 billion users from across the world.

There are different ways of sharing videos on Facebook:

  • Regular videos
  • 360 video
  • In-stream video ads
  • Carousel video ads
  • Cover video

So Facebook has provided marketers with a variety of choices. This is why around two-thirds of US businesses use Facebook’s video advertisements.

Facebook video specs

  • Aspect ratio: 9:16 or 16:9
  • File size: up to 4GB
  • Video length: up to 240 Minutes

Facebook has a whopping 1.6 billion visits each day which makes it unrivaled among all social networks.

Instagram Stories and posts: Best for sharing your moment

Before IGTV, Instagram launched other video-sharing features. Pictures or videos of your moments can easily be shared using regular posts on Instagram.

Instagram regular posts video specs

  • File size: up to 15MB
  • Video length: up to 60 seconds
  • Max video width is 1080 pixels wide

Although this is very short, you can upload several video clips and pictures in a single post.

Instagram Stories and posts best for sharing your moment IGTV

Instagram Stories is also a fantastic feature by which you can share your videos.

Instagram Stories video specs

  • Instagram story dimensions: 1080px by 1920px.
  • Aspect ratio: 9:16
  • Video length: up to 15 seconds
  • File size: up to 4GB

In Stories, you can upload several videos to be displayed as a slide show. Stories will automatically disappear after 24 hours.

quaranti[m]e instgram stories IGTV

Instagram Stories has another type of video feature that is very popular among social users. Live videos are the most authentic means of interacting with users and showing them behind the scenes.

The length of Live videos on Instagram Stories can be up to 1 hour. This feature can be accessed using the Instagram app just by clicking on Your Story.

Why IGTV marketing?

Now that we’ve introduced several famous video sharing features you might ask what differences exist between IGTV and these apps.

Adding new IGTV video

IGTV is actually a separate video sharing application which its main capabilities are accessible using Instagram apps and the web page.

IGTV was first released on the 20th of June 2018 and is now so popular that it is being used in 30 languages.

IGTV video specs

  • Video length (common users): 15 seconds to 10 minutes
  • Video length (larger accounts and verified users): 15 seconds to 60 minutes
  • File size (10-minute videos or less): 650MB
  • File size (60-minute videos): 3.6GB
  • Size of cover photo: 420px by 654px (11.55)
  • File type: .MP4
  • Video size: 9:16
  • Video thumbnail/cover image: .JPG
  • Minimum frame rate: 30 FPS
  • Minimum resolution: 720 pixels

Instagram has also provided some updates on IGTV since its initial release.

For example, from 2019, you can create one-minute previews of your videos to be shown on your profile and your followers’ feed as well.

This will greatly help you to be discovered and encourage your audience to “watch the full video on IGTV”.

Also, one of the best tools Instagram has offered is the “IGTV series feature”. Using this feature you can arrange your content like a collection to be released on a regular basis.

Considering all these features, IGTV marketing is a must in the world of digital and it would be hard to find a good alternative application for it.

IGTV in the world of digital marketing

Tips to use IGTV marketing

Video marketing is now a very competitive means of brand awareness and, therefore, you need to have a plan for it. IGTV marketing is a great option for you to generate more leads and convert them into sales.

Here are several tips which can help you grow your business using IGTV:

1. Define a video style for your brand

A lot of accounts on Instagram are constantly broadcasting content and it might be difficult to get ahead of this competition.

A unique style in content generation can significantly help you make your IGTV videos stand out.

Your tone of voice, background colors, video format, cover photos, and many other things give your IGTV videos a style. If you want to make your audience remember your brand, you need to think of a creative and unique style.

For example, Nivea has made a beautiful theme on its IGTV page just using a minimalistic background and a logo:

2. Republish your live videos using IGTV

Instagram live videos can’t be always so well-organized that your message is conveyed completely and accurately.

Also, not all your audience can watch it online so you need to republish your content to reach maximum views.

IGTV is a good choice for modifying and curating your live videos. Try to record your live videos, edit them, and share them using IGTV to repeat your message.

3. Make announcements by Instagram Stories

You can make an announcement for your IGTV videos by Instagram Stories in order to get maximum exposure.

Actually, many people won’t watch full-time videos because they’re always in a hurry. This is why you need to encourage them somehow.

Try to outline your IGTV videos’ content and share it in Stories to draw the attention of your audience.

You need to create a sense of urgency so that they feel they’ll lose an important thing if they don’t watch your full-time videos.

IGTV tip - make announcements by Instagram Stories

4. Create specific IGTV Series

One of the most important factors in digital marketing is consistency. A regular social presence is a must that will make your audience remember your brand.

This is why many brands use social media schedulers to have an automatic posting procedure. Instagram IGTV videos can also be scheduled using a Series feature.

Fortunately, you can create an IGTV Series in three different ways:

  • Instagram app
  • IGTV app
  • Web page

If you haven’t already created an IGTV Series, you can “Create Your First Series” in all these three ways.

Then, select and add your videos to a specific IGTV Series. Try to define a focused and goal-oriented series to be able to manage them well.

You can also “Post a preview” of your videos to your Instagram feed to promote your IGTV content using 60-second previews.

5. Include influencers in your IGTV plans

Nowadays, one of the most effective techniques for growing businesses on social media is influencer marketing.

Many brands try to promote their social content with the help of influencers. Your IGTV videos can also get maximum views if you collaborate with influencers.

First and foremost, you have to think of finding niche influencers and then choose those who are better content creators. This can bring authenticity and help you appear like a thought leader.

6. Take advantage of user-generated videos

Despite many beneficial aspects of video content, they’re very expensive. You need to set aside a considerable marketing budget along with a lot of time and effort.

One way of reducing expenses is by using your followers’ content. Sharing user-generated content is a good way to have authenticity in content marketing.

You can ask your followers to create videos based on your style and contribute to your page. You can then edit these videos and share them as a separate IGTV Series.

You will get higher rates of engagement and reduce your costs by sharing user-generated videos on IGTV.

7. Cross-promote your IGTV videos on other networks

Apart from promoting IGTV videos using previews and Instagram Stories, you can use cross-promotion with other social services.

First of all, you can “Make Visible on Facebook” to cross-promote your Instagram content, especially IGTV videos on Facebook.

If you want to post your IGTV videos via Facebook you need to go to “Where Your Video Will Appear” and choose IGTV and also your Facebook Page below before clicking on Post.

IGTV tip - cross-promote your IGTV videos on other networks

It’s good to have callouts to your IGTV channel from:

  • Twitter
  • Email newsletters
  • Facebook Page

You can also use “Copy Link” in your IGTV video menu and use the URL anywhere to share the video outside of Instagram.

Last but not least try not to republish YouTube videos on IGTV without editing the format of the videos, because they don’t look quite right!

Final word

I have explained the main aspects of IGTV marketing for your business. Of course, you should try to learn your competitors’ tricks and techniques too. Look out for the types of hashtags, style, video lengths, scheduling, etc. This will help you reach your audience more effectively.

By

Guest author: Tom Siani is an online marketing expert with more than 4 years of experience in the digital industry. He is also collaborating with some well-known brands in order to generate traffic, create sales funnels, and increase online sales. He has written a considerable number of articles about social media marketing, brand marketing, blogging, search visibility, etc.

Sourced from jeffbullas.com

Read More
By
In News

Snapchat was overtaken by Pinterest in US users last year. But the real threat is coming from China’s TikTok and no one knows how fast it’s growing.

No Comments

By Tyler Sonnemaker.

  • Pinterest surpassed Snapchat as the third-largest social media network in the US, according to a report from eMarketer.
  • EMarketer predicted that Pinterest will “continue to stay ahead of Snapchat in the coming years.”
  • The report said that despite Snap’s 2019 comeback and popularity with younger users, Pinterest’s “universal appeal” helped it pull ahead this year.
  • Shares of Pinterest surged as much as 12% on Tuesday morning after the report was released.

Pinterest has surpassed Snapchat to become the third-largest social media network in the US, according to a new report from eMarketer.

The news is a significant shake-up in the social media pecking order, and could signal that Snapchat has begun to lose its luster among the millennial users who for years have given the social media app a distinct cachet.

Pinterest’s number of monthly users grew to 82.4 million in 2019, up 9.1% from the previous year, beating out Snapchat’s 80.2 million, a 5.9% increase, according to the report’s estimates. Pinterest claimed the third spot behind No.2-ranked Instagram, and Facebook, which reigned as the most popular social network in the US last year.

The report caused Pinterest’s stock to jump as much as 12% on Tuesday morning after the report’s release.

“While Snapchat has a young core audience that it caters to, Pinterest has a more universal appeal, and it’s made significant gains in a wide range of age groups,”  said Nazmul Islam, an analyst at eMarketer, which is owned by Business Insider’s parent company, Insider Inc.

But the report does not include user numbers for China’s TikTok, which has enjoyed explosive growth among teens and young adults over the past year. In December, CNBC cited an estimate from App Annie that TikTok had 625 million monthly users on a global basis, but it’s not clear how many users the app has in the US.

In its report, eMarketer predicted that Pinterest would remain ahead of Snap for the coming years. But if the TikTok surge continues, both Pinterest and Snapchat could be soon be overtaken by the Chinese app.

Shares of Snap remained flat following the report’s release.

Following a 2018 redesign that initially caused backlash among users, Snapchat seemed to be making a comeback in 2019 thanks to popular augmented reality “lenses” like its gender-swap filter, earning it praise from investors.

But Pinterest’s efforts to convince investors that its platform is a “visual discovery tool” more akin to Google than Snapchat seem to be paying off. The eMarketer report shows that the strong user growth Pinterest saw ahead of its public offering last April has continued on an upward trajectory.

emarketer pinterest snap age
Pinterest’s wide appeal across ages helped it surpass Snapchat as the third-largest social media network in the US in 2019.
eMarketer

Get the latest Snap stock price here.

Feature Image Credit: Reuters/Brendan McDermid

By Tyler Sonnemaker.

Sourced from Business Insider

Read More
By
In News

What publishers like BuzzFeed, Hearst and Vice are learning from being on TikTok

No Comments

By Deanna Ting

TikTok is attracting a small but growing group of publishers eager to master the short-form video platform and its young and growing audience.

While most are still in an experimentation phase when it comes to using TikTok, they’re learning what works and what doesn’t on an app that doesn’t yet have publisher-friendly resources like discovery tabs or the sharing of ad revenues. For now, few have dedicated resources to the platform, choosing instead to treat it as an experimental channel.

Vice, which just started using TikTok earlier this year, is finding its TikTok followers crave exclusive content. Next month, Vice is planning to launch a Munchies by Vice account on TikTok and Vice Chief Digital Officer Cory Haik said the account will feature exclusive content made specifically for TikTok by Vice’s own social innovation team, which produces content for a variety of platforms.

“We need to go in with a specific offering that feels native to what users of TikTok are producing themselves,”  said Haik. “We can’t do a derivative.”

Those daily short-form videos, she said, “will still feel like Munchies,” but will also “feel very TikTok. It will have a different voice.”

Vice is still figuring out exactly what kinds of videos to post on TikTok for Munchies, but some early ideas include celebrating food bloopers, using recipes many people know but often mess up on, but embracing those failures. Or developing viral skits that look more closely at trending food items or themes. One example is, if throwing cheese on walls is trending on TikTok, Munchies might create a video that looks at which cheeses stick and why.

“It sounds like a big investment but we’re just optimizing teams that already exist,” Haik said.

BuzzFeed, which also started using TikTok earlier this year with four different accounts, isn’t creating exclusive content for TikTok just yet, but said reception to its repurposed video content has been positive. One of BuzzFeed’s most popular posts is from Nifty, demonstrating a baking hack.

“One of our motivating factors to be on TikTok and create a Tasty account was that we were finding a lot of copycat Tasty accounts on TikTok,” Tabir Akhter, head of platform strategy at BuzzFeed said. “People want to see food content on TikTok. It’s not only videos from high school bathrooms. It’s more than that. It’s a huge and robust platform of lots of people with lots of different interests, and people are really responding to our huge viral food videos on Tasty.”

She said her team has been very strategic and thoughtful about how they adapt existing video content for TikTok so that “it doesn’t feel like an imposter. If feels very native.” BuzzFeed is also thinking about launching more original TikTok content next year.

Hearst Magazines, which has been using TikTok and its former iteration, Musical.ly, since May 2017, also repackages content from other platforms onto TikTok. It’s found certain types of content to be the most engaging: namely, anything featuring celebrities and “mesmerizing” content, said Sheel Shah, Hearst Magazines’ vp of strategic partnerships and consumer products. One of Seventeen’s most popular TikTok posts, he said, was one that showcased the art of bullet journaling.

Historically, publishers have been reticent to spend time and money on platforms where it’s not clear how they can generate revenues. Currently, there is no mechanism for creators or publishers to directly monetize on TikTok, such as with sharing ad revenue, but all three publishers are hopeful there will be one day.

The short-form nature of TikTok videos, however, makes it relatively cost-effective to produce new content as Vice intends to do, but it also forces creators to get creative, even when they’re adapting existing content.

“What makes TikTok unique is the hyper-speed at which content is created and consumed,” said Akhter. “We do enjoy the really short-form nature of the videos … it forces your creativity in the adaptation process.”

Shah, however, said he wonders if TikTok will eventually allow longer-form video content like Musical.ly did before, since he finds the 15-second video format somewhat limiting.

All three publishers said they view TikTok primarily as a long-term way to engage and grow their respective audiences, similar to how they did with Snapchat a few years before.

“For TikTok, right now it’s more about long-term audience development and one day, maybe, monetization,” Shah said. “We want to figure out what this audience is interested in and how we can extend this understanding onto other platforms where we do have ROI.”

The strategies for the two platforms, however, are different, although both TikTok and Snapchat appeal to younger user bases and feature short-form video content.

“Snapchat, for us, is very curated and magazine-like,” said Akhter. “But on TikTok, there’s a huge potential for binge behavior and to go into a rabbit hole of our content, and we’re eager to serve them with that.”

At Vice, Haik said they’ve gotten their Snapchat strategy “down to a science” and they are not aiming to do original content on that platform, or on Instagram in the same way they’re doing it on TikTok.

One thing all can agree on about TikTok, however, is that its user base skews young. A leaked ad pitch deck fromJune 2019 said the majority of TikTok users (69%) are from Generation Z (ages 16 to 24), while 25% are age 25 and older. Most users are also female (60%). In the U.S., TikTok has more than 30 million monthly active users who spend, on average, 46 minutes on the app, per user, per day. Globally, the number of monthly active users is 800 million, with 500 million based in China.

Snapchat, by comparison, has 210 million daily active users worldwide, and eMarketer estimates it reached 297.7 monthly active users this year.

“We still believe, more so than ever, there’s a huge audience on the platform,” Shah said. “It’s a great opportunity for us to engage and interact with that new generation of consumers. We want to make sure that we’re there. We can get feedback on what this audience likes and doesn’t like, which informs our broader content strategy.”

While all three publishers have participated in trending hashtags on TikTok, none we spoke to have purchased a hashtag challenge or branded lens.

Looking ahead, Vice’s Haik said she wonders if TikTok will enable creators to have direct-sell ads and she thinks it could also be a platform where Vice could place branded content. She, along with Shah and Akhter, also said they wonder if and how TikTok will eventually make it easier for users to discover creators, their media titles included.

By Deanna Ting

Sourced from DIGIDAY

Read More
By
In News

As TikTok’s popularity rises, buyers say the ad team needs to grow to keep up

No Comments

By Kristina Monllos.

TikTok is looking to grow as media buyers say the app needs to expand its U.S. team to keep up with demand. The company is currently seeking candidates for at least 17 positions for its ads business: two brand strategists, two influencer campaign managers, an ad products specialist, an ad operations manager, a trust and safety policy manager, among others, in its U.S. headquarters of Los Angeles, as well as offices in New York, San Francisco and Mountain View, California, according to jobs listings on LinkedIn.

The Bytedance-owned short-form video app launched in the U.S. in 2018 but its popularity has skyrocketed in recent months, drawing more big-name advertisers like Ralph Lauren and Chipotle, as well as a number of beauty companies like Eos, Too Faced and Elf to the app.

The allure of TikTok for advertisers isn’t just the potential to be among the first major advertising wave on the app, which has captured the attention of younger audiences, but the ability to run campaigns with sound as it is native to the way users watch content on the app, according to media buyers.

Buyers say the company is in a growth phase and that TikTok’s ad business now resembles early Snap Ads with low CPMs, a buggy self-serve platform (for those who have access to it), few metrics and unproven sustainability. Buyers have other complaints, like wait times of up to 24 hours for campaigns to appear on the platform and a junior ads team in need of help, too. For advertisers expecting the maturity of an ad platform like Google, TikTok will be a letdown. But for advertisers looking for a new platform to experiment on while it’s still growing, even with the current hiccups, buyers are bullish.

“They need to scale up a bit to meet the demand on the platform,” said one media buyer who has run multiple TikTok campaigns for clients. “We saw the same thing with Snap and Snap Ads a few years ago.”

“They don’t have the ad tools built out or measurement tools to really help us figure this out and justify it to compare it to some of the more established digital platforms,” said Matthew Rednor, founder and CEO of Decoded Advertising. “That’s a big complaint and one of the biggest reasons that big advertisers and agencies are not yet on the platform, even though everyone is there.”

It’s standard for new platforms to have immature ads businesses early on and TikTok is no different, according to buyers who say that while ad reps are kind and easy to work with, they aren’t as seasoned as reps at Google or Facebook. At the same time, the company’s main headquarters are in China and some decisions are still run through that team making the time difference a pain. That can, in turn, lead to a slower campaign implementation with some campaigns taking at least 24-hours to be live on the app, according to the first buyer.

It’s unclear how large the current U.S. ad team is or how it is organized, as a spokesperson for TikTok declined to share that figure or share current user numbers; buyers weren’t certain of the size. In February, Digiday obtained a deck that said TikTok had more than 27 million users opening the app eight times a day. The company offers video ads, brand takeovers, brand lenses, “top view” video and its signature hashtag challenge.

The difficulty advertisers and agencies face with TikTok currently makes sense to Shann Biglione, evp of Americas and global strategy at platformGSK, who said that clients’ expectations for platforms ads teams are often something like Google’s, which is “the gold standard” of ads teams. Dealing with that comparison, “it’d be surprising if TikTok didn’t struggle,” said Biglione.

Biglione has worked with TikTok’s ad team in China but hasn’t yet worked with the team in the U.S. “When you have up and coming platforms, especially one that doesn’t have [its main] headquarters in the U.S. [it can be hard],” said Biglione. “Operationalizing in China versus the U.S. is a bit different. China is much more fast-paced. Decisions can happen very, very quickly in China versus the U.S.”

Multiple buyers compared TikTok’s current ads offering to early Snap Ads as costs are low — CPMs are generally around $1.50, according to a buyer — but the tools and measurement capabilities aren’t built out yet, making it hard to prove the value of being on the platform. The company’s self-serve ad platform is still in beta as well as its interest-based targeting, according to a spokesperson, who said that “everything we’re doing is still in beta,” that the company is “in an experimental phase” and that it is “still figuring out what works for the brand and the community.”

The self-serve ad platform is bare-bones at the moment, with capabilities that allow buyers to get ads on the platform but there’s nothing flashy, no advanced capabilities and that it’s “a little bit buggy,” said the first buyer. “To be fair, they did let us know in advance that that was the case. It had been ported over from the Chinese version. We’ve also been helping them and flagging bugs we run into.”

The lack of results to showcase could keep buyers away for the moment; currently, the company’s ads site doesn’t offer any case studies for prospective advertisers to check out. Metric Digital CEO Kevin Simonson said that the shop hasn’t yet worked with TikTok but likely will in the first quarter of next year. “[The] reason being is that the people I’ve seen who have tested it, paid ads not influencer, haven’t seen good results,” wrote Simonson in an email. “I have a feeling it’ll only work like Snap only works, cheap AOV in beauty for the youngins’.”  

Still, even with that comparison and the lack of clarity into what the platform delivers for brands, there’s lots of interest from advertisers and agencies and that will likely continue to grow, according to buyers.

“We know a ton of people are there, we know it’s a hot platform, so we should be experimenting and dabbling there versus waiting for them to have mature measurement systems because we know people are there, and this is the time to get on,” said Rednor. “To reject it because they don’t have a full team of reps yet or any of the things that the mature platforms do is kind of crazy at this point. You’re going to be somewhat left behind.”

 

By Kristina Monllos

Sourced from DIGIDAY

Read More
By