23 Important TikTok Stats Marketers Need to Know in 2021
Thinking about adding TikTok to your social media marketing strategy? These TikTok stats will help you tell the forest from the memes.
Thinking about adding TikTok to your social media marketing strategy? These TikTok stats will help you tell the forest from the memes.
TikTok stats help marketers put things in perspective. Just how explosive is the app’s growth? Is TikTok actually where all the cool kids hang out? Have Instagram Reels put a dent in TikTok’s numbers?
The short answer to these questions is fairly, generally, and not really.
But the long answers can help you make the most of your TikTok marketing strategy. Or, you may decide that not enough of your audience uses the platform for it to be worthwhile.
Find out where and how people are using TikTok, what they expect from brands, which ad formats perform best, and more with these TikTok stats.
Bonus: Want to know how a viral social video creator makes millions of dollars in sales? Download the free guide now.
TikTok hit its 2 billion global download milestone in August 2020, according to court filings published by the company. That’s not the only download milestone the company passed last year. TikTok was also the most downloaded app in 2020.
Source: Hootsuite Digital 2021 Report
Source: Hootsuite Digital 2021 Report
With 689 million global active users as of January 2021, TikTok ranks as the 7th most used social network in the world. Facebook, YouTube, WhatsApp, Messenger, Instagram, and WeChat outpace the app, with more than a billion users in each case.
Here’s some context for that stat.
Global user stats are never clear cut, and TikTok’s user base has been on the geopolitical chopping block over the past few years. First, TikTok is not available in China. Instead, its sister app Douyin, a separate platform, offers a similar app experience to a base of 600 million daily active users. Combined, these two apps move into fifth position, ahead of Instagram and WeChat, and not far behind Messenger.
In June 2020, TikTok was banned in India, the second-most populous country, at the height of its popularity. At the time, TikTok was on track to reach 120 million users, a figure that put the app ahead of Instagram, Snapchat, and other platforms in the country.
Pakistan recently rescinded its second ban on TikTok. The app has also been subject to bans in Armenia, Bangladesh, and Indonesia, narrowly avoided a ban in the United States, and was pulled out of Hong Kong last year.
Despite these bans, TikTok network grew in 2020. Around 50 countries have been added to TikTok’s service map in the past year.
Source: Hootsuite Digital 2021 Report
Just as TikTok stats don’t paint a full picture without Douyin, search query stats aren’t complete without spelling variations. Together, TikTok and “Tik Tok” rank as the third most common search team on YouTube, after “song” and “songs.” Imagine if TikTik and “Tik Tik” were added into the mix.
According to reports, the valuation of TikTok’s parent company, Bytedance, is now at $100 billion. In 2019, The multinational usurped Uber’s long-held position as the world’s most valuable start-up when it was valued at $75 billion.
WhatsApp was chosen as the preferred app in 22 countries, followed by Facebook, which was favoured in 18. Line, VK, Instagram, KakaoTalk and WeChat also made the list.
In China, 15% of respondents rated Douyin as their favourite app, far behind WeChat which was chosen by 49%.
It’s always a good idea to keep an eye on the competition. Especially when the competition is eyeing up TikTok and releasing features “inspired” by the app.
YouTube may not pose an “existential threat” to TikTok, but with 2.2 billion monthly active users, the increased popularity of Shorts on the platform could have an impact. As could Instagram’s Reels feature, which debuted in India shortly after the country banned TikTok. In November, Snapchat also launched a TikTok-like feed called Spotlight.
For now, Instagram has not posed a major threat, but that could change with the upcoming introduction of a vertical Instagram Stories feed.
TikTok revealed stats on U.S. users for the first time last year in a lawsuit against the U.S. government.
According to the filings, as of June 2020, 91.9 million Americans use TikTok every month, and 50 million are on the app every day. Since the app’s U.S. debut in 2018, its user base has grown at a rapid rate, increasing by 800% between January 2018 and June 2020.
Research by Morning Consult finds that TikTok brand awareness increased by 12% between January and June 2020.
Research published in April by the Pew Research Center shows that 48% of U.S. adults between 18-29-years-old use TikTok. The figure drops to 20% in the 30-49-year-old age group, 14% among 50-64-year-olds, and 4% for those 65 and up.
Source: Pew Research Center
Ah, smells like teen spirit.
Last summer, a public favour poll by Morning Consult revealed that one in four U.S. Gen Zers were more inclined to use TikTok after learning about the potential ban. Only 9% of Gen Zers polled said they’d be less likely to use the app.
Source: Morning Consult
Research from AppAnnie finds that TikTok users with Android devices spend an average of 13.3 hours streaming on the app per month.
This puts TikTok in fourth position among social media apps, behind Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram in terms of cumulative time spent using the app.
Note: While Hootsuite considers YouTube a social platform, it was placed in the video streaming category of this survey.
Source: Hootsuite Digital 2021 Report
When asked in the 2020 GlobalWebIndex survey how they mainly use TikTok, the majority of respondents answered: “to find funny/entertaining content.”
Posting/sharing content ranks as the second most common behaviour and keeping up with news placed as the third most popular. For comparison, posting content was the top use for Instagram and Snapchat. So, it may be fair to infer that entertainment value is TikTok’s key selling point, especially in terms of consumption.
Other social sites people use to find funny/entertaining content include Instagram, Pinterest, Reddit, Twitter, and Snapchat. But TikTok and Reddit were the only apps where that use case ranked first.
Like Twitter and Instagram, TikTok has become an outlet for social and political activism. Support for racial justice intensified last summer in response to the murder of George Floyd by a police officer. By August 16, 2020, posts with the tag #BlackLivesMatter had been viewed 20.3 billion times.
TikTok cites this data in a lawsuit against the U.S. government as evidence of the app’s social utility. But in May, the app faced allegations that it was suppressing #BlackLivesMatter content. In a statement, TikTok CEO Vanessa Pappas apologized and said that a technical glitch was the primary cause of these suspicions.
TikTok’s relationship with Black creators has been called into question before. Despite being a driving force behind trends on the platform, there are reports that Black influencers receive disproportionate recognition and compensation, and face routine appropriation by white counterparts.
To help address this disparity, in January 2020, the company launched the TikTok for Black Creatives incubator program.
Music drives TikTok. Many songs get more plays on the app than anywhere else, including Spotify. Just ask Drake, whose made-for-TikTok “Tootsie Slide” amassed one billion views in just three days. The top song on Spotify in 2020 logged a total of 1.6 billion streams. It was released in 2019.
Old tracks find new life on TikTok, too. Fleetwood Mac’s 1997 hit “Dreams” returned to Billboard charts and tripled in sales after a video using the song went viral.
@420doggface208
TikTok is still a bit of a wild west for brands. Case and point: Ocean Spray, a 90-year-old beverage company that nabbed 15 billion media impressions via TikTok in a month without doing a thing.
The juice brand also saw a sales bump after TikTok creator Nathan Apodaca (@420doggface208) featured the cran-raspberry drink in the now-famous video of his skateboard commute to work.
Source: Google Trends, “Ocean Spray”
While Ocean Spray wasn’t behind the video, the uptick the brand received in reach, sales, and other metrics revealed the potential brands can attain on the app. The power of viral TikTok moments has prompted companies like Walmart and Dunkin’ Donuts to encourage employees to post videos while at work.
Bonus: Want to know how a viral social video creator makes millions of dollars in sales? Download the free guide now.
Get the free social video guide now!TikTok’s latest year-end report highlights the niche communities that took off in 2020. Top of the list is #AltTikTok, which Bustle reporter Kaitlyn Wylde describes as “arty side of the cafeteria.”
@palmparadisee stay for awhile ! 🧸🌴 #fypシ #alttiktok #vibes #hoodalt @grizz.cll
Also on TikTok’s “Biggest Little Communities” list are #WitchTok, #DracoTok, #CottageCore, #RugTikTok, #ArtTikTok, and #PlantTikTok. So basically: artsy, witchy, homey stuff: You love to see it.
Data collected by AppAnnie from iOS and Google Play stores reveals that TikTok only ranks behind Tinder when it comes to how much consumers spend. TikTok rakes in more than YouTube, Disney+, Tencent Video, and Netflix.
Source: Hootsuite Digital 2021 Report
Time and again statistics prove that the first three seconds of a video are critical. In this case, TikTok research finds that more than 63% of ads that showcase a product or message in the first three seconds get clicked on the most.
According to TikTok stats, nearly half of the top auction ads on the platform appeal to an emotion.
“On TikTok, this means keeping it real and relatable,” explains a company guide. “Great TikTok content often includes an undertone of lightheartedness and positivity.”
More specifically, vertical videos have a 25% higher 6-second watch-through rate. Those six seconds can make all the difference, especially in a TikTok ad. Who’s not shooting vertical for TikTok at this point?
TikTok data reveals that one in three ads with the highest view-through rate features someone talking directly to the audience.
It comes as no surprise that the creator-driven platform favours ads with a similar look and feel. This extends to organic brand content as well. The Washington Post was among the first to crack the format with its “TikTok Guy,” Dave.
@washingtonpost Lawmakers are interrogating the CEOs of Google, Facebook and Twitter today on the role the companies have played in spreading misinformation.
In a TikTok-commissioned survey by Kantar, almost three-quarters of respondents ranked TopView first among TikTok’s ad formats. In addition to the format’s full-screen and sound-on capabilities, participants cited its more natural placement as a reason for their preference.
Reinforcing this finding, TopView ads were also rated with the lowest skip preference, lowest annoyance level, and highest attention level. The format also ranked first in credibility and willingness to click or share categories, as well as other call-to-action attributes.
We could have SWORN you were someone who wanted to blow your competition out of the water on social media. Our bad. We’ll just leave this 60-day free trial here for someone else then…