While many tighten their belts in anticipation of a recessionary economy, the social media platform, TikTok, continues its trend of explosive growth, with no signs of a slowdown during 2023.
According to WARC, the World Advertising Research Center, TikTok will see an ad spend increase of $2 billion in sales this year, to reach a colossal $15.2 billion in overall ad revenue in 2023 alone.
Despite many brands reducing advertising budgets for the current year, WARC reports 75% of marketers plan to increase their TikTok presence, with all product categories across the board upping their spending on the medium. The predicted increase would mean a whopping 52% gain for TikTok over 2022 figures.
The wildly popular platform features user-submitted videos ranging from 3 seconds to 10 minutes in length, and was launched in 2016 by the Chinese parent company, ByteDance. TikTok’s user base can be found in over 150 markets worldwide, and surpassed the one billion mark in global daily users in early 2022.
For the third consecutive year, TikTok earned the crown for most downloaded app in the world, its popularity largely bolstered by brands seeing it as an effective way to reach younger audiences in particular.
But the social media app continues to face scrutiny over security concerns, with governments in the United Kingdom, Canada, the European Commission, and others recently joining the United States in banning its use on government devices.
While TikTok regularly denies sharing data with the CCP, Chinese intelligence laws state that firms are required to “help the Community Party when requested.”
What does this mean for the future of the world’s fastest growing social media platform? And how could it potentially affect TikTok’s vast following of social media users? To find out, read more here.