It seems like everything goes back to TikTok nowadays. At least, that’s what the latest TikTok stats are showing.
E-commerce websites have special discounts for TikTok viral products. Bookstores have special #BookTok shelves.
Music charts are influenced by whatever song is trending on the app.
Marketers and advertisers have discovered a literal goldmine and are bringing their strongest tools and workers to extract this pretty, precious, money-making metal.
But if you’re still unsure whether your brand can benefit from TikTok . . .
Here are the most important TikTok statistics for businesses and brands that you need to know in 2023!
What is TikTok? 🤔
Launched in September 2016, TikTok is a social media app that allows users to create and share short videos with music, filters, and other special effects. The videos can be anywhere from 15 seconds to 10 minutes long. The app is owned by the Chinese company ByteDance.
TikTok’s algorithm analyzes user behavior and preferences to show them a personalized ‘For You’ page of videos that they may find interesting or entertaining. Users can also follow other users, join trends, like and comment on videos, create duets and stitches, as well as use hashtags to discover and categorize content.
All you need to create a TikTok video is a smartphone.
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Users can film themselves and edit the footage using the built-in editor. Then, they can add popular songs or other trending audio available on the app.
Why should marketers care about TikTok? 📊
Marketers should care about TikTok because of its huge popularity among Gen Z. (btw, the TikTok stats start here)
1. Bloomberg estimated that Gen Z had “$360 billion in disposable income” in 2021. HubSpot states that as Gen Z slowly enters the workforce, this number will steadily grow by 10% in 2030.
Gen Z clearly possesses immense spending power.
And where is Gen Z?
On TikTok.
2. According to Statista, TikTok was the most downloaded app worldwide in 2022, having generated over 600 million downloads.
3. That same year, Pew Research Center revealed that TikTok is the most used app by teenagers in the USA alone. The research shows that 67% of teens said they use TikTok, while 16% admitted that they use the app “almost constantly.”
4. In a different report, Insider Intelligence noted that Gen Z is using TikTok as a search engine to learn about new products and places to go.
TikTok is constantly ranked as one of the emerging channels for Saas companies, and you can watch a full video on that here:
Why does TikTok have such a strong grip on the younger generation?
There are several reasons why TikTok has been dominating the social media landscape in recent years:
- Bite-sized content: Gen Z has grown up with the internet and social media, and they are used to consuming content quickly and efficiently. TikTok’s short-form videos fit perfectly into this mold, offering bite-sized entertainment that can be consumed in just a few seconds.
- Personalization: TikTok’s algorithm is very good at serving up content that users are likely to enjoy. This means that every user’s ‘For You’ page is unique and tailored to their interests. This personalization keeps users engaged and coming back for more.
- Creative expression: TikTok’s easy-to-use editing tools and music library allow users to unleash their creativity and express themselves in unique ways. This has led to a proliferation of dance challenges, lip-syncing videos, and other forms of creative expression on the platform.
- Potential for large-scale success: Because it’s so easy to make a TikTok video, anyone can become the next viral sensation. We’ve seen TikTokers like Charli D’Amelio go from doing short dances in their living rooms to working with large brands and building a business empire. It’s an attractive dream that the majority of users strive for.
- Community: TikTok has a strong sense of community, with users interacting with each other through likes, comments, and collaborations. This creates a sense of belonging and fosters connections between users who may come from different cultures but share common interests. It also strengthens the relationships between content creators and fans.
How effective is TikTok marketing? 📈
TikTok can be an effective marketing tool for businesses and brands looking to reach a younger audience. Reasons include:
- Large audience: TikTok has a massive user base, with over a billion active users worldwide. This presents a huge opportunity for businesses to reach a large and engaged audience.
- Engagement: TikTok’s algorithm is very good at showing users content that they are likely to enjoy, meaning that users tend to spend a lot of time on the app. This presents an opportunity for businesses to capture users’ attention with engaging content.
- Creativity: TikTok is a platform that rewards creativity, and users expect to see content that is entertaining and unique. This means that businesses have the opportunity to create content that is creative and stands out from the competition.
- Influencers: TikTok has a large number of influencers who have built up large followings on the platform. Working with these influencers can be an effective way for businesses to reach their target audience and build brand awareness.
There are many businesses and brands that managed to thrive on TikTok.
The cosmetics industry in particular has countless examples of products going viral thanks to the app. Big names like Rare Beauty, Fenty Beauty, ELF, and Dior Beauty have all experienced a clear boost in sales for their select products following a TikTok marketing strategy.
Even books go viral on the app, so much so, that TikTok has launched a collaboration with Penguin Random House that allows users in the UK and the US to link their favorite books in-app.
Whether they are self-published or backed up by Harper Collins, the #BookTok community can easily propel a novel to the New York Times Best Sellers list. Some examples include Iron Widow by Xiran Jay Zhao, A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Mass, and The Silent Patient by Alex Micahelides.
TikTok is proven to be a great place for B2B businesses to grow as well. Grammarly, Morning Brew, and Shopify have gathered hundreds of thousands of followers thanks to their creative and humorous videos.
It’s safe to say that TikTok marketing can be an effective strategy when done right.
That being said, it may not be effective for every single business or brand. It’s important to understand your target audience and whether they are active on the platform or not.
Not to mention, creating engaging and high-quality content can be time-consuming and may require a significant investment of resources.
TikTok statistics to know in 2023 🤳
So, what do the statistics about TikTok say?
We gathered the latest TikTok usage statistics related to viewer retention, watch time, audience engagement, user growth, leads/CTRs, brand awareness, age, and overall usage.
The information comes from various trusted sources in the marketing industry, including Insider Intelligence, Statista, Hootsuite, Hubspot, and more.
The full reports are all linked in their respective paragraphs.
TikTok statistics on viewer retention
5. Viewer retention is going to look different on each video-sharing platform. The statistics on TikTok will look completely different from the ones on YouTube.
This is because people open them for different reasons.
On the one hand, viewers who open YouTube are generally looking for long-form videos that go more in depth about topics they are interested in.
On the other hand, those who open TikTok are searching for quick, bite-sized entertainment that can make them laugh, feel inspired, or help kill time.
6. According to Uscreen’s industry benchmarks, “60% – 80% for most videos because popular TikTok videos are less than 30 seconds long.”
There is a lot of discussion on TikTok’s impact on people’s attention span, with many scientific experts expressing that constantly consuming 15 to 30-second videos can drastically shorten one’s ability to stay focused.
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It remains to be seen whether our attention span will continue to decrease or find a way to come back up again.
TikTok statistics on watch time
So we know that TikTok users gravitate towards videos that are between 15 and 30 seconds long, but how much time do they spend watching these? How much time do they spend scrolling through these bite-sized bursts of entertainment every day?
7. Based on data from 2021, Statista’s March 2022 report concludes that “6% of TikTok users spend more than 10 hours per week on the platform”, while 11% spend between 5 to 10 hours, and 30% spend less than an hour.
8. According to a different report from the same year by Sensor Tower, users spent an average of 95 minutes on TikTok during the second quarter of 2022, surpassing YouTube.
9. When it comes to Gen Z specifically, Insider Inelligence gathered that their demographic spends more than 3 hours a day on TikTok. Qustodio supports this in their own report, stating that in 2022, children and teens spent an average of 107 minutes per day on TikTok globally, way more than on Snapchat, Instagram, and other popular social media apps.
TikTok undoubtedly has our attention and has a particular grip on Gen Z. If they’re part of your target audience, there is a high possibility your brand will find success on the platform.
TikTok statistics on user growth
TikTok hasn’t stopped growing since its popularity BOOM during lockdown.
10.At the end of September 2021, TikTok announced that they’d officially reached 1 billion users, resulting in a reported 45% increase since July 2020.
11. In a 2022 blog article, Hootsuite concludes that “eight new users join TikTok every second”, averaging close to 650K brand new users daily.
And these numbers are expected to grow.
12. Insider Intelligence predicts that “TikTok will have 834.3 million monthly users worldwide in 2023” and 955.3 million in 2025.
With so many people on the app, it’s impossible not to find an audience for your business. It doesn’t matter if you’re a small business or a grand corporation—with the right content and advertising strategy, you can grow your brand exponentially.
TikTok statistics on audience engagement
So we’ve seen that there are a lot of people on TikTok. But are they even present? Do they even interact with the content they see?
Yes, they do.
13. Sensor Tower “TikTok saw daily opens from 29% of its active installs”, meaning that almost one-third of users open the app multiple times a day.
Given its interface and the length of the videos, this hardly comes as a surprise. The design of the ‘For You’ page allows you to endlessly scroll and scroll through hundreds of videos until it’s 5 AM and you remember you have to get to work or school in a couple of hours.
14. Influencers, in particular, seem to have a lot of power when it comes to TikTok engagement. According to an Upfluence report published this year, macro influencers see a 6.20% engagement rate on TikTok, compared to 1.36% on Instagram and 0.44% on YouTube.
15. Micro influencers are equally successful, gaining a 17.96% engagement rate on TikTok and under 4% on Instagram and YouTube.
Despite one might feel about influencer culture, it’s clear that they have a purpose and can have a very strong impact on a brand’s awareness and sales. It’s definitely worth partnering up with content creators that you feel can represent your business well.
16. This same year, Social Insider’s study found that TikTok’s engagement rate is 4.25% by followers and 5.10% by views, noting that while these are good stats, the average engagement on the app does seem to be decreasing every year.
Here’s a list of the top 25 TikTokers, how much they upload and what is their engagement rate.
However, there’s no reason to be nervous about the decrease just yet, since it seems to be a trend across all social media platforms.
TikTok statistics on CTRs/CPMs/CRs
If you want to advertise on TikTok, there are a few key metrics you want to pay attention to. One of these is the average CPM and CTR.
17. According to the data from Lebesgue, the average click-through-rate for e-commerce ads on TikTok is 0.58% while the average cost-per-thousand impressions is around $9.5. As for the average conversion rate, it’s above 1%.
While these are good numbers overall, they’re still lower than the ones recorded by similar ad types on Facebook. Nevertheless, if your target audience spends more time on TikTok than on Facebook, you should be able to get a good ROI.
TikTok statistics on brand awareness
Is TikTok marketing worth it? If you start to heavily promote your brand or product on the app right now, how can you be sure that it will be successful?
When it comes to brand awareness, TikTok is showing some promising numbers, according to a 2021 consumption trend report published by the platform in partnership with Neuro-Insight.
18. The report shows that “there is a 27% increase in aided brand recall when users see brands’ organic TikTok content before their paid ads.” TikTok partially attributes this to the native nature of said ads.
19. The same study claims that when exposed to the same ad on TikTok and TV, viewers showed a 13% increase in ad memorability, an 11% in narrative connection, and a 12% increase in engagement.
These increases lead people to “pay more attention to branding moments, find ads more likeable and relevant, and experience more positive brand perception.”
One can argue that these statistics come from TikTok themselves, meaning that there is a possibility that the numbers may have been exaggerated as part of their marketing strategy.
Even if that were true, TikTok’s strong impact on consumers is hard to deny. Ask anyone who uses TikTok about viral brands or products that they’ve seen on the app and you’ll see just how big of an impact it has on our shopping habits.
TikTok age statistics
How old are the people using TikTok? Besides Gen Z, what other age groups are currently in love with it? Is your target demographic active on the app?
20. According to Statista, as of September 2022, nearly 50% of content creators on TikTok are between 18 and 25 years old.
21. Qustodio reports that TikTok is the most popular social media app for kids worldwide, with 44% of them using the app frequently. This is a 3% growth since 2020 when the app skyrocketed in popularity.
22. When it comes to individual countries, the same report shows that 42% of US children, 51% of UK children, and 39% of Australian children chose TikTok as their favorite preferred social media app in 2022. In all three cases, we can see a popularity growth compared to the previous two years.
But this doesn’t mean that TikTok is a kids’ app.
23. Statista reports that in the past year, 56% of US adults aged between 20 and 29 years old have used TikTok in the US alone. The same report also found that adults aged between 30 and 39 years old were the third age group that uses the app the most, with 45% of them being active on the platform.
While Gen Z is the dominant age group, Millenials are showing strong numbers, too. Whether you’re a marketer trying to reach one or both demographics, TikTok is a safe place for you to explore.
The elephant in the room – TikTok Security 🐘
Is TikTok safe to have?
TikTok has had its fair share of controversy related to data privacy.
According to a 2022 report by Internet 2.0, TikTok’s Android version excessively harvests information related to your device, calendar, contact list, and location.
Couple this with the fact that TikTok is owned by a Chinese company, which makes a lot of people nervous about whether or not their data can be accessed by a foreign government and the risks something like this can entail.
So nervous, that the USA and Canada have already banned TikTok on government-issued devices.
But what does this mean for us regular folks? Should we be scared? Is TikTok unsafe?
As of now, it’s as unsafe as any other social media app we download on our phones. It collects the same type of data that Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and other platforms do. It uses it for the same purposes that other platforms do—personalized ads and a curated ‘For You’ page.
It would be wrong to say that TikTok doesn’t touch your personal data but it would also be wrong to say that it’s the only guilty party.
Not having TikTok doesn’t mean your privacy is automatically safe, not as long as you also have Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and other social media apps downloaded on your devices.
Wrapping it up 🎁
The numbers don’t lie. These statistics show that TikTok is strong and can make your brand equally strong.
With the right connt plan and marketing strategy, you can also mine that TikTok gold and elevate your business to a whole new level.
So, what are you waiting for?
Frequently asked questions about TikTok 💡
TikTok is a platform where people can watch, discover, and share short-form videos, which can be anywhere from 15 seconds to 10 minutes long.
Its easy-to-use interface allows users to just scroll through the videos endlessly and interact with creators through likes, comments, stitches, and duets.
Users can edit their videos through TikTok’s built-in editor or they can use third-party apps like CapCut. They can add their own audio or pick one from the trending sounds available in the app.
People mainly go on TikTok to discover and share videos, interact with their communities, as well as catch up with the latest trends.
TikTok’s simple editor makes it easy for anyone to make their own videos and potentially become the next viral sensation. They can quickly join trends and share their content with others in their community with the help of the platform’s sophisticated algorithm.
Gen Z in particular also uses TikTok as a search engine. Just last year, Google’s Senior Vice President Prabhakar Raghavan acknowledged that “almost 40% of young people” turn to TikTok or even Instagram when looking for a place to eat lunch, according to their studies.
TikTok makes significant money through ads and in-app purchases.
Thanks to its exponential popularity, countless brands spend money on TikTok advertising every day, whether it’s by publishing video ads or by taking advantage of the platform’s newest shopping ads, catalog listing ads, or live shopping ads.
TikTok allows fans to support their favorite content creators through gifts and coins. Viewers can purchase these using their real money and creators can exchange them for—you guessed it—real money. The platform takes a 50% cut of every dollar withdrawn.
Just like a school of fish that moves together in perfect synchronization, the younger generation has quickly adopted TikTok as their preferred social media platform.
Ages 10-19 are 25% of users.
Ages 20-29 are 22.4% of users.
Ages 30-39 is 21.7% of users.
Ages 40-49 is 20.3% of users.
Ages 50+ are 11% of users.
Young people effortlessly navigate through the app, creating and sharing short videos with ease. The younger generation has grown up in a world where technology is ubiquitous and are therefore more comfortable with using new social media platforms like TikTok.
Much like a school of fish, this age group moves quickly and adapts easily to new trends and popular content.
