7 Reasons Why 2023 is Going to be the Explosive Year for TikTok Advertising

1 – People BUY Products on TikTok
At Higher and Higher Rates

Hashtag #TikTokMadeMeBuyIt currently has 15.7 billion views of millions of videos in which people showcase products they bought on TikTok.

• TikTok quarterly consumer spend has grown to $840M
  (in US consumer spend rose 125% QoQ).
• 37% of TikTok users have a household income of $100k+
  (only 9.60% have less than $25k)

2 – Facebook Ads Performance
is Rapidly Declining For Most Advertisers

While Facebook Ads is still a very effective channel to drive sales, it's becoming more and more expensive. Especially in the past year or so.

This happens because Facebook has a lot more advertisers than it has inventory.
According to Facebook's investor report, their ad revenue rose 56% year-on-year with only 6% increase in number of ads delivered.

This attributes to a 47% increase in average price per ad unit. Facebook expects this trend to continue (source).

The changes Apple did with the IOS 14 are only accelerating this trend. If you're experiencing drop in Facebook performance, this is likely it.

3 - TikTok is Expected to Reach

1.8 Billion Users by the End of 2022

• Did you know that TikTok is #2 fastest growing brand in 2021? (just behind Tesla) source
• In the US, number of TikTok users just rose to 186 million. (56% of population!)
• TikTok even surpassed Google.com in number of visitors making it the most visited domain in 2021.
• It is the first social media app ever to reach 1 billion users in just 4 years (it took Facebook 9 and Instagram 7 years to reach 1b users)

Source https://www.businessofapps.com/data/tik-tok-statistics/

4 – TikTok is NOT Just for Teens

The biggest misconception about TikTok is that its audience is mostly under 18 years old.

This was true back in 2020.

During the pandemic, many parents were curious to see why their kids are spending all day on TikTok and guess what? They got hooked too!

As a result, more than 55% of TikTok users are 25 years or older while 37.90% are 35 and older (as of April 2022.)

5 – TikTok is NOT Just Dancing
Videos and Funny Challenges

Another misconception is that TikTok is mostly used for sharing dancing & funny videos. However, TikTok has become so big that it opened room for advertisers to enter any niche.

The example below shows just a couple of popular hashtags and the number of views they have.

6 – Competition on TikTok is Still Low

While TikTok also saw increases in ad prices compared to when Zaza Digital's team got involved back in 2019, the CPMs are still lower than on Facebook Ads while the conversion rates are very similar.

According to a recent survey done by Social Media Examiner, only 9% of surveyed marketers were using TikTok Ads compared to 93% who used Facebook Ads (source).

7 – TikTok is Rapidly Adding New Features in Their Advertising Platform

When our team started experimenting with TikTok Ads back in 2019. the platform was extremely basic. There wasn't any detailed targeting options and their tracking pixel was only able to attributed single session purchases.

These are couple of exciting features that TikTok added just in 2022.

• 7-day click 1-day view conversion attribution window. TikTok now officialy has the same attribution model as Facebook! This basically means that TikTok can now work for more considered purchases, not just impulse buys of cheap products.
• Advanced matching. This is another improvement in TikTok's tracking capabilities which allows it to attribute more conversion events and as a result find your target audience faster.
• Display cards. This feature allows advertisers to have 10+ iterations using a single video ad. Display card is similar to image extensions on Google Ads for example. It has shown to increase CTR and conversion rates by 2x in some cases (based on testing for our clients). This is especially helpful when your brand is running a promotion and it's hard for you to record a new video just for a 3-day promotion.
• Instant pages. TikTok users have very short attention span and TikTok team is very aware of that. As a result, they released a drag and drop landing page builder that offers users an instant-loading experience right within the TikTok app. This allows advertisers to quickly deploy & test sales warmup pages before sending people to the landing page (ideal for more considered purchases).

Overall, our experience is that TikTok is publishing and iterating features SO FAST that it's soon going to be on par with Facebook.