Tag Archive for: TikTok

TikTok Prepares to Introduce Sponsored Search Ads, Becoming a Competitor to Google and Microsoft

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TikTok is quickly becoming more than just a social media app for teens to showcase their dance moves and lip-syncing skills. It is becoming a lucrative platform for businesses to reach an increasingly diverse group of audiences, especially now that the company appears to be preparing to introduce sponsored search ads. 

This move aims to generate more revenue for TikTok and position the platform to be a direct competitor to Google and Microsoft.

The search ad market has long been dominated by tech giants like Google and Microsoft. The rise of social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram has driven a shift towards social media search ads in recent years, though. 

Now, TikTok’s entry into the market marks another step in this direction as the platform offers a chance for businesses to connect with a younger demographic who might not be as easily reachable through traditional advertising methods.

The new beta test of the advertising format on TikTok allows businesses to bid on specific keywords to appear at the top of search results. As usual, the search ads will be marked as “sponsored”, making it clear which results are paid and which are organic.

One thing that may help the ad option stand out is TikTok’s targeting capabilities. The app’s algorithm uses machine learning to personalize users’ feeds based on their behavior, search queries, and demographic information. 

This means that businesses can reach a highly specific audience with their ads, ensuring that their marketing strategies are more effective and efficient. This is particularly attractive to brands in a landscape where platforms like Facebook have gradually limited ad targeting options following criticism of its use of user data.

As with any new ad format, this move has the potential to be divisive. More ads in search results may potentially frustrate users. However, if search ads are relevant and engaging, they could enhance the user experience by providing relevant information.

Unfortunately, it is unclear when we can expect this ad option currently in a limited beta test to become available to all advertisers. In a statement to Search Engine Land, the company said:

“We are in the very early stages of testing search ads in select regions. For clarification – at this stage, advertisers do not have the ability to bid on specific keywords for advertising purposes. This part of our testing is managed by TikTok based on keywords that would be most relevant and impactful to the advertiser and their specific ad.”

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TikTok Adds 500,000 Licensed Songs Brands Can Use In Ads and Content

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TikTok is making it easier for brands of any size to use licensed music on the platform with its new Sounds for Businesses service. 

With this, small businesses will be much more able to afford popular songs in their ads, videos, and other organic content through the TikTok Audio Library. 

Why Licensed Music Is Important For Marketing

For brands trying to rise above the noise on social media, using licensed songs is a crucial part of getting users’ attention.

Even more, TikTok says its research shows 68% of users find remembering a brand’s message easier when it is paired with a popular song they like. Of those, 62% said they would take time to learn more about a brand if they enjoy the song. This is because users feel like a brand may have similar tastes to theirs if they choose music they like as well. 

Unfortunately, licensing music is not easy – especially for smaller brands. It is not always clear who to contact to license a piece of music and costs can quickly stack up. 

Trying to slip a popular song into your marketing materials without paying isn’t likely to work either. TikTok (and all other social networks) use automated tools to identify music that may be infringing on a copyright claim. When this happens, the app removes your audio entirely – potentially ruining your message in the process. 

With this new library of licensed music, brands can now avoid this entire complicated and expensive process by choosing from over 500,000 licensed tunes and sounds. 

How To Use TikTok Sounds for Businesses 

TikTok’s Sounds for Businesses library is available to brands creating content and ads on both desktop and mobile.

On desktop, the Audio Library is within the Creative Center. Here, you can filter audio by theme, genre, mood, and length to find the perfect match. 

For mobile users, licensed songs can be added when creating a new post by tapping “Add Sounds” and filtering the results to licensed music. 

Sounds for Businesses is rolling out now. For more, read TikTok’s announcement here.

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TikTok Adds New Targeting and Boosting Options For Promoted Content

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TikTok is expanding the ways brands can turn their TikTok content into ads with new targeting and boosting features for promoting posts.

Promoting content is a way for those unable to use TikTok’s more complex advertising options to improve their reach, boost awareness of their profiles, and drive new leads – similar to the limited “Promote” features on YouTube and Facebook.

Below, we’ll get into the details of the new targeting and boosting options available on TikTok and how they may help your business:

New Options For Promoted TikTok Posts

More Profile Views

As the name suggests, this option helps drive traffic directly to TikTok profiles through a unique call to action on your brand’s story or highlighted product post.

Promote For Others

The idea of buying ads to promote someone else may seem weird but can be very useful for those who share content collaborations, those who partner with influencers, or partner brands. Additionally, this option allows the promotion of a specific creator’s videos or LIVE content.

Location Targeting

If you’re a local business that only services a particular area, location targeting can allow you to restrict your ad reach to exclusively target those in that service area. 

More Messages

The new “more messages” advertising option is a powerful tool for those who typically rely on their sales team to drive sales from leads. With this option, you’ll drive users directly to messaging your TikTok account where your experienced sales team can take over and close the deal.

Brands are likely feeling conflicted about TikTok ever since it was revealed that the company regularly uses internal tools to bypass its ranking algorithm and promote content or profiles across the platform. With these new options for promoting posts, you can take the power back into your hands to ensure your posts are being seen by the users who matter most to you.

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TikTok Employees Can Boost Videos To Go Viral

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A new report from Forbes confirms that TikTok employees can and do promote specific videos across the platform – effectively deciding what goes viral.

Several current and former employees reported that some employees have access to this ability via a “heating” button which overrides the platform’s usual algorithm to ensure as many users can see content as possible.

What Is “Heating”?

An internal TikTok document called the “MINT Heating Playbook, “The heating feature refers to boosting videos into the For You feed through operation intervention to achieve a certain number of video views.”. 

According to the company, this heating button is intended to boost videos that will “introduce celebrities and emerging creators of the TikTok community.”

Though it was never explicitly stated that every video in the For You feed was selected and placed using the algorithm, that has always been the public understanding of how the feed works. Behind closed doors, it appears things have been a little different.

TikTok Used Heating To Encourage Partnerships

The social network doesn’t altruistically use this algorithm to promote creators who show promise.

Several former employees said the company uses the process regularly to help attract businesses and influencers.

In response, TikTok spokesperson Jamie Favazza didn’t dispute the nature of heating, but downplayed how often it is used:

“We promote some videos to help diversify the content experience and introduce celebrities and emerging creators to the TikTok community,” TikTok spokesperson Jamie Favazza told Forbes. “Only a few people, based in the U.S., have the ability to approve content for promotion in the U.S., and that content makes up approximately .002% of videos in For You feeds.”

What Favazza doesn’t mention is that heated videos make up 1-2% of daily video views according to the MINT Heating Playbook.

Do Other Social Networks Boost Videos?

It has long been suspected that most social networks manipulate their feeds to encourage partnerships with brands or content creators. However, TikTok is the only one so far to have a practice like this confirmed. 

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FCC Commissioner Calls For TikTok To Be Banned In The US

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TikTok is once again facing a potential ban in the United States after FCC commissioner Brendan Carr raised dire concerns about the app’s risk to national security. 

This is the second time the company has come under fire by US government officials. During Donald Trump’s presidency, the company was threatened with a ban until one was rejected in federal court. 

The issue now is the same as it was then – TikTok is owned by ByteDance, a Chinese company. As TikTok continues to become massively popular in the US, some worry there’s an unprecedented risk for the app to funnel data on US citizens to China. Others have suggested the prominence of the app and its current influence on American culture creates a risk for propaganda to influence American citizens.

Is TikTok Getting Banned?

The short answer, for now, is that TikTok is not getting officially banned in the US.

No formal actions have been taken, and the Federal Communications Commission does not have the authority to directly regulate or ban the company. However, the FCC has a significant influence on those that do – Congress. 

For example, it was Carr’s recommendations that largely led to the Chinese company Huawei being banned by Congress. 

What Has Carr Said?

The latest concerns over a ban were sparked by comments made by FCC commissioner Brendan Carr during an interview with Axios. 

When asked about his view on TikTok and its potential security risks, Carr plainly stated “I don’t think there is a path forward for anything other than a ban.”

Furthermore, the commissioner showed little hope that the company may come to an agreement with the US government that would allow it to remain operating in the country:

“Perhaps the deal CFIUS ends up cutting is an amazing, airtight deal, but at this point I have a very, very difficult time looking at TikTok’s conduct thinking we’re going to cut a technical construct that they’re not going to find a way around.”

How Is TikTok Responding?

For now, the company seems to be confident that they will reach a deal to continue operating and downplayed Carr’s role in any discussions about the issue. As a representative from TikTok told CNN:

“Commissioner Carr has no role in or direct knowledge of the confidential discussions with the US government related to TikTok and is not in a position to discuss what those negotiations entail. We are confident that we are on a path to reaching an agreement with the US government that will satisfy all reasonable national security concerns.”

As such, it is safe to assume that TikTok will remain in the US for at least the short-term future. How long it can withstand the growing concerns remains to be seen, though.

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TikTok Reveals Its Latest Exciting Feature – Pictures

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Though TikTok is mostly known for its video content, the platform’s latest feature is a throwback. Along with new editing abilities and longer captions for content, TikTok has revealed it is introducing a Photo Mode within its app.

What Is Photo Mode?

As announced in a recent blog post, TikTok’s Photo Mode is a new post format that creates a carousel or slideshow of still images for users to share.

Along with their original images, users can add music, filters, stickers, and more to the carousel.

Ironically, the new post format is very similar to the type of content found on Instagram – which has been repeatedly accused of copying TikTok’s features.

Though nearly every popular social network has incorporated aspects of TikTok’s layout and features in the past year or two, Instagram has received the most criticism for the ways it has borrowed from the newer platform. This may be partially because many view the two platforms as rivals.

Enhanced Editing Features

Along with the reveal of Photo Mode, TikTok introduced new editing tools for videos, photos, and more. 

As the blog post says:

“TikTok’s enhanced editing tools allow you to easily adjust clips, sounds, images, and text in a new editing environment, all within TikTok’s creation flow.”

With the new tools you can:

  • Edit clips: Stack, trim, and split video clips.
  • Edit sounds: Cut, trim, and set the duration for sounds.
  • Edit and position text: More easily edit, position, and set the duration for text.
  • Add overlays: Add photo and video overlays for picture-in-picture (or video-in-video) stacking.
  • Adjust video speed: Speed or slow the pace of video clips.
  • Frame content: Rotate or zoom in and out of frame of individual clips.
  • Add sound effects.

The new features, including Photo Mode, have been rolled out to all users in the U.S. and most other countries.

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TikTok’s Longer Content Descriptions Give Creators A Crucial SEO Opportunity

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Creators on TikTok are receiving way more space to describe their content and optimize it for the platform’s search engine. Over the weekend, many users started to notice that the limit for descriptions has increased from just 300 characters to over 2,000 characters.

The increase doesn’t just give creators more space to explain their video or page. Longer descriptions will also make it easier for TikTok to understand the content better, better include it in search results, and make more informed recommendations for users.

When you consider the impact these descriptions will have across the platform, it becomes clear that content descriptions are becoming a powerful optimization signal for those wanting to stand out on the increasingly competitive app.

How We Learned About Expanded Video Descriptions

It is unclear exactly when the feature started rolling out, but social media analyst Matt Navarra called attention to it Friday with a screenshot of a notification he received in TikTok’s app.

The full message says:

“You can now type up to 2200 characters in your posts’ descriptions: This allows you to express more details about your creations, describing what your videos show, giving you the opportunity to get closer to your audience, generating more engagement while becoming more searchable and better recommended by TikTok to viewers.”

TikTok is Becoming a Search Engine

If you haven’t spent much time on TikTok, it may come as a bit of a shock to learn that young people are increasingly using the platform as an alternative to Google’s search engine.

The phenomenon is so widespread, that Google has publicly addressed the shift, with Senior Vice President Prabhakar Raghavan stating:

“In our studies, something like almost 40% of young people, when they’re looking for a place for lunch, they don’t go to Google Maps or Search. They go to TikTok or Instagram.”

The longer descriptions signify that TikTok is also fully aware of this phenomenon and is prioritizing ways to improve its search results. For example, creators now have more flexibility to describe what happens in a video, include keywords that will help their videos be found by the right people, and provide links to a professional website or other social accounts.

Plus, longer video descriptions will even improve your TikTok content’s chance of being found on Google since the search engine has confirmed it indexes TikTok videos.

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Ecommerce Brands Increased Ad Spend On TikTok 60% In Q2

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TikTok continues to gain more interest from brands – especially ecommerce brands – as it proves that the social app is here to stay. New data collected from over 5,000 stores shows that ecommerce brands spent 60% more to advertise on TikTok in Q2 of 2022. Even more, analysts believe the trend will continue for the foreseeable future.

This information comes from Triple Whale ecommerce analytics, which gathered the data from all the stores using their tools to estimate the overall growth of ecommerce ad spend on the increasingly popular social video app.

“It’s time to get on TikTok while the needle’s still moving in the upward direction, or before users are completely inundated with ads from new brands,” advises Triple Whale. TikTok “is no longer a channel serious paid media buyers can avoid without cutting into revenue and profit.”

Other Findings About Ecommerce Q2 TikTok Ad Spend

Notably, the most significant increases don’t come from major brands. Smaller retailers with annual sales between $1 million and-$5 million are instead leading the charge.

Along with these findings, the report also included a few other interesting facts:

  • Overall ad spend across the 5,000 online retailers rose by 11% in Q2 to a total of $529.7 million
  • Retailers with revenues between $1 million and $5 million are contributing to the biggest increases in ad spend
  • In the first two quarters of this year, retailers spent a total of $48.4 million on TikTok ads – which was a 231% increase over the previous 6 months
  • CPMs vary by industry. Baby, books and collectibles niches have a CPM below $10, while health & beauty & digital products are over $14 CPM
  • Stores with over $25 million in sales have the highest average order values and ROI

How TikTok Compares To The Competition

While TikTok is showing impressive growth in popularity among online retailers, it still trails Facebook and Google by a significant amount. Specifically:

  • Despite only growing 5.6% from Q1, Facebook remains the leading ecommerce choice for advertisers by a wide margin
  • Google grew 20.5% in Q2
  • Snap declined 10.8% in Q2

If you’ve been writing off TikTok as just another social network that will be here today and gone tomorrow, it is likely time to reconsider. The platform seems to be cementing its place among users and winning over brands through increased ad revenue.

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Google Wants To Emphasize Short Videos In Search Results

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Inspired by the popularity of TikTok, Google is working to find new ways to include short-form videos in search results. 

Google Product Manager Danielle Marshak revealed this during a recent episode of the Search Off the Record podcast with hosts Gary Illyes and Lizzi Sassman from Google’s Search Relations team. 

Why Google Is Interest In Short-Form Videos

Though the entire episode is more broadly focused on discussing how Google handles video content in search results, the conversation eventually turns to the most popular video format of the moment – short vertical videos less than 5 minutes in length. 

Beyond their popularity, the Google employees agree there is a lot of interest in short videos because they are easily digestible and can contain a lot of information in a compact package.

As Marshak says:

“And this format, it’s really cool because as I mentioned, it is very concise. You can get a lot of information in a short period of time, and you can also get a loot of different views and perspectives…

“So we think this kind of content could be useful for a lot of different types of search queries, and we’ve been experimenting with how to show it to users more often.”

Could TikTok Videos Appear In Search Results?

Since TikTok is practically synonymous with this specific type of short video, it was only a matter of time before the social video app was brought up. 

Interestingly, Gary Illyes explained that the unique way TikTok works makes its content much easier for the search engine to crawl and index compared to others like Snapchat or Instagram.

Since every TikTok video has a unique URL and can be opened directly in a web browser, Illyes says there is a chance the videos could be directly indexed and shown in search results:

“You can actually open it on the laptop and you will end up on a web page and you can actually watch it on the web page. You don’t have to have the TikTok app for watching the video.

“So I imagine that if they allow crawling – I haven’t checked – then we can probably index those videos as well.”

Other Ways Google Is Integrating Short Videos Into Search

When asked about other types of short video content that Google might include in search results pages, Marshak mostly focused on educational or informational content, such as recipes:

“So let’s say, again, you’re searching for some new ideas to make banana bread. And right now, you might see traditional recipes, you might see longer videos, but you could also see short videos, which could just give you a different style or perspective.

“And people’s preferences are different. Some people might prefer to read; some people might prefer a longer video; some people might prefer short videos.

“And so we want to offer a lot of different options to get that type of information, in the format that is most useful for you. So that’s one example.”

From what was said, it seems the ideas are still in their early stages but the episode makes it clear that Google is taking TikTok and its popular video format very seriously. You can expect to see much more of it in search results sooner, rather than later.

Listen to the full episode of the Search Off the Record podcast here.

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After Historic Stock Losses, Facebook Plans To Challenge TikTok Head On

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After suffering a massive drop in stock values earlier this week, Facebook is planning to pivot more towards being a short-form video platform. 

The shift in focus was announced by CEO Mark Zuckerberg in a company-wide virtual meeting with Facebook employees shortly after the stock crash, which was triggered by a devastating quarterly earnings report from the platform’s parent company – Meta Platforms. 

In its latest earnings report, Meta disclosed that it had lost money throughout the quarter as well as seeing the first-ever decline in daily active users. By the end of the quarter, the company says more than half a million users had stopped using the platform on a daily basis. 

All of this then caused investors to panic, leading to the company’s stock price dropping by over 200 billion dollars in a single day – the largest single-day stock drop in history.

Why Is Facebook Losing Users and Money?

As Zuckerberg laid out to employees, he sees three major contributing factors to the unflattering quarterly earnings report. These are a recent wave of investments from Meta to establish Metaverse, difficulties with advertising after the of Apple’s App Tracking Transparency feature and Android’s take on this information sharing feature, and TikTok.

The first issue is easy to believe. After the company’s hugely publicized rebrand to Meta, it has been spending a lot of money to establish its Metaverse platform – which has yet to pay off. Given the mixed-to-negative reception the Metaverse has received, it is also possible investors are nervous about the potential for eventual revenue from the platform.

Facebook is also seeing a notable loss in money from advertising, largely because the largest mobile operating systems have both implemented new features which give users more information and control over how their information is being used. 

On one hand, this is a benefit for users because they can now easily opt-out of being tracked online. On the other, it makes it much more difficult – and even potentially impossible in some cases – to target relevant ads for users. This leads to less interest in ads from users, which translates to less engagement, and thus less revenue, 

What About TikTok?

After surviving challenges from Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat, Facebook may have finally met a competitor it can’t afford to ignore.

Mark Zuckerberg told employees that part of the company’s poor quarterly performance was an “unprecedented level of competition” from TikTok.

As such, Zuckerberg plans to directly focus on promoting its short-video-related content and features across both Instagram and Facebook.

As he told meeting attendees:

“People have a lot of choices for how they want to spend their time, and apps like TikTok are growing very quickly. And this is why our focus on Reels is so important over the long term.”

While both of Meta’s social networks have increasingly prioritized video in recent years, this underscores a renewed emphasis on video content – especially short, easy-to-share clips like those found on TikTok. As such, brands hoping to reach their audiences on these platforms should be prepared to similarly focus on creating video content that connects with their potential customers.

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