TikTok is still known as a platform for Gen Zers and their dance challenges. However, the platform is growing towards a social media channel with diverse content for many different communities. For this reason, it is an important platform for many brands to get closer to their audience.
Keeping up with the ever-changing media landscape is very important as an online marketeer. That’s why we’re here to keep you up-to-date with 4 essential statistics about TikTok.
1.TikTok has over one billion monthly active users
Every second TikTok gains 8 new users. That is an average of 650.000 new users, or the entire population of the city of Rotterdam, signing up every day.
With more than 3 billion downloads, TikTok is the first non-Facebook app with this many downloads. Since January 2014 the only other apps that hit 3 billion downloads were Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, and Whatsapp. In comparison to Facebook and YouTube, TikTok had super fast growth. It took Facebook and Youtube eight years to hit 1 billion users, TikTok hit that number in only five years.
2. TikTok beats Instagram in popularity with Gen Zers
TikTok is more popular than Instagram among Gen Zers (born between 1997 and 2012). In the United States, 37.3 million Gen Zers use TikTok and 33.3 million of them use Instagram (eMarketer, 2021). Snapchat is still the most popular platform within this age group, but it is expected that Snapchat, TikTok, and Instagram will show similar results within this generation by 2025 (Statista, 2022).
Users on Instagram are gradually getting older. The fastest growing group on Instagram is between 35 and 44 years old. But on TikTok, this group is also expanding. In 2020 26% of the TikTok users were between 35 and 54 years old. In the first quarter of 2021, this grew to 36% (MarketingCharts, 2021).
3. Users watch longer video’s on TikTok
TikTok was designed to keep you on the platform for as long as possible, and it did so successfully. With an average of 10.85 minutes per session, TikTok users are the most engaged audience. This is almost 3 times longer than users spend on Instagram, which is 2.95 minutes per session (Statista, 2019).
TikTok users also like watching longer videos (videos longer than 1 minute). This is notable since the average attention span of teenagers is not considered to be very long. At first, users could upload videos up to 60 seconds, but since 2022 it is possible to upload videos for up to 10 minutes.
4. TikTok users are big spenders
Did you hear about the TikTok bag? Or the TikTok Feta Effect, the pasta recipe that went viral on TikTok and caused supermarkets in America to almost run out of feta cheese? TikTok videos have a great influence on the shopping behavior of its users. Until recently this was an indirect influence: users would come across a product on TikTok and go somewhere else to buy it. Since the in-app shopping feature with Shopify, it is possible to make purchases on the platform.
TikTok is the number one app considering consumer spending. In 2021 consumer spending increased by 77% on TikTok. Users have spent 2.3 billion dollars, compared to 1,3 billion dollars in 2020 (Hootsuite Digital 2022 Report).
Also want to advertise on TikTok?
With TikTok advertising, you can potentially reach up to 884.9 million people. In total, this is 17.9% of all internet users above the age of 18. Online marketers see the platform more and more as an effective place to advertise.
Curious about whether TikTok advertising could work for your business? Drop us a message in the contact form!
Hide and Seek is an online advertising agency. We are knowledgeable, personal, strategic and different.
