Trends: The Tik is Toking

For advertisers, this poses the obvious questions; ‘Where should we advertise?’, ‘what will users use instead?’ and no doubt throw a spanner in the works of businesses’ organic content creation efforts on the platform.

Consumers have rushed to the fast growing platform, with advertisers following in their wake. Just last year, TikTok's total global advertising revenue increased by ~18% last year, with Marketing Brew reporting a total spend of almost $4 billion.

Its short-form video content has helped to reshape the social media content landscape, with Facebook, Instagram and YouTube introducing their own versions of the content format, and users spending 52 minutes on average watching, sharing and commenting on TikTok.

I doubt that it will be impossible to access the platform, there will surely be workarounds. However, social media apps benefit the most from the network effect, and TikTok’s significant reduction in users will reduce both available content and total users on the platform, effectively killing it.

My prediction is that users will quickly flock to another platform like Instagram and Youtube. The short form video format is here to stay - Instagram Reels (accounting for 30% of time spent on Instagram already) will continue to grow, as will Youtube Shorts. Other platforms, like Linkedin are testing short-form video formats, too.

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So, my recommendations are (assuming you’re targeting globally):

1. Continue to invest in the production of short-form video content for your brand
2. Reallocate advertising budget to other platforms, whatever users are left on TikTok will likely be less engaged. 
3. Continue to invest in TikTok content until it is banned, a lot can change between now and then.

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