TikTok is the social media that blew up these recent years. And it is still gaining traction, outperforming its competitors and players that had been established for years. But as so many people started using that app, many ad agencies and brands began to get interested by the possibilities that this app offers. This app disrupts the social media landscape, and you can’t stick to the classic rules of advertising to make the best of it. So, let’s see what challenges ad agencies do have to face on TikTok are!
Types of advertising on TikTok
As TikTok is a brand-new media, the first challenge to face is to get more familiar with the kind of advertising you can use on that platform. There are indeed several types of advertising format. First the Brand Takeover, a skippable still image or video that appears on the home screen of TikTok as the user opens the app. In-Feed Ads are 9 to 15 seconds video that appears on the screen as the user scrolls through the For You page. They’re also skippable and they tend to have high impact than the Brand Takeover since it is nested in the flow of a regular video.
Hashtag Challenge Plus is a feature that TikTok created especially for brand and businesses to advertise on the app. Basically, it introduces a specific hashtag which will be linked to a dedicated page, leading to an e-com platform. It’s made to create important advertising campaign, so users participate to challenges and trends, thus making the brand go viral. Finally, Branded Filters can be an organic way to create buzz around your brand, by adding a filter that users can use just as a regular filter. Except it’s your brand and you can add subtle advertising messages on it.
Consumer targeting
One of the challenging thing to understand when advertising on TikTok is to know who you’re targeting and who you’re talking to. TikTok is one of the most popular apps in world these days, with 800 million monthly users (which makes it the 6thmost used app). More specifically, advertising on TikTok can be relevant regarding of the demographics. Among those 800 million active users, 66% are under 30 years old, and 41% are between 16 and 24 years old. It is a target of choice, the globalized Gen-Z, living in the world’s major cities. They will soon enter the workforce and thus constitute the next generation of consumers.
Time management
The thing that really differs from more traditional communication channels for advertising agencies is the time management of advertising campaign. On TikTok everything goes fast, instantly, new trends come every day and before you know it, they’re already gone. And that’s a real challenge. The tricky thing is to create an advertising campaign that is still relevant when it’s displayed. Imagine inventing a campaign based on a current trend, and by the time you’ve created it, it’s not relevant anymore. You would have wasted time, money and it would have adverse effect on your brand image. Thus, be very careful when planning your advertising project.
Cost management
Obviously, reaching to such wide audience has a cost. The alleged cost of ads on TikTok seems to be very high. $50,000 a day for Brand takeover, $10 per impression for In-Feed Ads (with a prepaid amount). And $150,000 a week for Hashtag Challenge. And major brands even pay more to promote their Hashtag Challenge campaigns, for instance. But considering the influence that such campaigns can have, many brands have found it profitable to run them.
In conclusion, you see that there are many new challenges to face for ad agencies on TikTok. Likewise, advertisers should definitely take such changes into account. But it’s also a risky game to play, as its cost is pretty high and its impact uncertain.
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