8 TikTok Stats Every Marketer Should Know

TikTok has exploded in popularity over the past few years, particularly among younger generations. With over 500 million active users worldwide, it has become a powerful tool for marketing and reaching a large audience.

Understanding TikTok and how it works is important for modern marketing for a number of reasons. Firstly, TikTok has a unique format and style that sets it apart from other social media platforms. It allows users to create short, catchy videos set to music, which can be highly engaging and shareable. As a result, TikTok has become a platform for creative expression and innovation, with users coming up with new and innovative ways to use the app to share content and connect with others.

In addition to its creative potential, TikTok is also a powerful marketing tool due to its large and highly active user base. The platform's users are highly engaged, with many spending hours on the app every day consuming and sharing content. This presents a significant opportunity for businesses and organisations looking to reach and engage with a large audience.

With this in mind, here are 8 statistics about TikTok you need to know in order to allow your business to tap into the creative potential and large user base of the platform, helping you to reach and engage with your target audience in a meaningful way.

TikTok has over 1B active monthly users.

TikTok's growth is nothing short of extraordinary. With 8 new users joining every second and 650,000 new users joining daily, the platform's user base continues to expand at an unprecedented rate. To put this into perspective, it's like the entire population of Helsinki signing up for TikTok each day. The platform's popularity continues to grow, and it is widely considered as one of the fastest-growing social media platforms today.

TikTok is getting more popular with marketers.

TikTok is quickly becoming a popular choice for advertisers looking to reach their target audience effectively. A recent survey by Hootsuite found that 24% of marketers now consider TikTok to be effective for achieving their business goals, compared to only 3% the previous year, which represents a staggering 700% increase. TikTok also has a diverse and growing community of users that can be targeted with specific content and campaigns, making it an attractive option for advertisers.

Adult audiences aren't completely sold on TikTok.

TikTok has its share of critics and supporters. In the United States, 34% of adults have a negative opinion of the app while 37% have a positive view. This makes it more controversial than other platforms such as Instagram, which is viewed favourably by 50% of adults and unfavourably by 24%, and Facebook, which is viewed favourably by 55% and unfavourably by 39%. However, the perception of TikTok varies by age, with 59% of 18- to 34-year-olds viewing it favourably compared to 40% of 35- to 44-year-olds and 31% of 45- to 64-year-olds. This suggests that older demographics tend to be more skeptical of the platform in comparison to younger ones.

TikTok has the monopoly on audience engagement.

While TikTok might not have won everyone over, the audience it does hit is more engaged with its' content than any other social media platform audience. In fact, TikTok has an average user session lasting 10.85 minutes. This is more than double the time users spend on the second-most engaging app, Pinterest, which has an average session time of 5.06 minutes. Furthermore, it's more than three times the time users typically spend on Instagram, which has an average session time of 2.95 minutes.

TikTok users are more engaged with long-form content.

With TikTok now allowing users to upload videos up to 10 minutes long, there's a respect for long-form content that is unavailable on other social media platforms. According to a report by TikTok in October, videos longer than one minute have garnered over five billion views worldwide. These longer videos are particularly popular among users in Vietnam, Thailand, and Japan, while users in the US, UK, and Brazil have shown the most engagement with them.

Close Captions are likely to improve your engagement rate by over 50%.

Adding text to your videos is not only a good practice for inclusive design, but it also provides significant benefits over videos that don't display captions or calls-to-action on screen. Another trend that is emerging on TikTok is the use of voice effects. TikTok's text-to-speech feature generates an auto-generated voiceover for the text displayed in videos with this feature enabled.

TikTok is still primarily being used for entertainment.

According to a 2022 GlobalWebIndex survey, the majority of TikTok users primarily use the app to find funny and entertaining content. The second most common behaviour among respondents was posting and sharing content, while keeping up with news was the third most popular use case. Compared to Instagram and Snapchat, where posting content is the primary use, it can be inferred that the entertainment value is the key aspect of TikTok that attracts users. Although other social media sites such as Instagram, Pinterest, Reddit, Twitter, and Snapchat are also used to find funny and entertaining content, TikTok and Reddit are the only platforms where this use case is the primary one.

TikTok Adverts perform best when kept between 21-34 seconds.

TikTok advertisements perform best between 21 - 34 seconds because this time frame allows creators to capture the attention of viewers, convey their message or tell a story, and leave them wanting more. Additionally, TikTok's "For You" page, where users discover new content, has a scrolling format, making it easier for viewers to quickly scroll through shorter videos without feeling overwhelmed. Lastly, shorter videos are more easily shareable and more likely to be watched again and again, which helps increase the visibility and engagement of the video.