If you are under the age of 25 or have teenage children or grandchildren, you can’t have missed out on TikTok. It is definitely the Social Network of the moment and one of the most downloaded apps on the planet in 2020.

Created in 2016 by a Chinese startup, ByteDance, it incorporated a similar app called Musical.ly in 2018, and is today the fastest growing community in history. The users of this application are called TikToker and are mostly represented by boys between 14 and 25 years old.

For these users, social networks are a place to find entertainment and / or freely express their creativity. In fact, one of the latest statistical studies of 2019 by Globalwebindex reports that in recent years the use of social media for sharing personal information or connecting with friends is less and less important. The new social media are increasingly aiming at the use of these for research or creation of entertainment content and this seems to be a real priority at a global level for users.

The approach to social platforms has therefore gone from “passive browsing”, ie the user who quickly scrolls through social feeds to passively consume content, to an “active browsing” approach, and therefore users who favor creation, more than the use of creative contents within entertainment networks.

In early 2020, TikTok recorded 104 million downloads, a 46% increase over 2019, and has nearly a billion monthly active users globally.

It is the second most downloaded application in the world, just after Whatsapp (it has already surpassed Facebook), present in over 150 countries and translated into 75 languages.

The heart of the app consists in sharing short videos of 15-60 seconds that can be created from scratch by users, or from existing videos, with choreography, reinterpretation of scenes from films or TV series or “visual karaoke”; contents that quickly become viral even outside the application (on Instagram, on Facebook …).

What users appreciate most about this application is that unlike other social networks such as Instagram and Facebook, it forces you to get out of the box and not care about looking perfect, indeed, it makes people appear clumsy, witty, spontaneous and authentic. There is therefore no obligation to create a visually beautiful content, but to entertain oneself and others. it is a social network that instills positivity, so much so that its slogan is “make every second count”, make sure that every moment is important.

As anticipated in our article, Generation Z and Millennials have been the most affected by this phenomenon.

Large companies were eagerly awaiting the opportunity to advertise on TikTok to target the consumers of the future.

Just 30% of users of this age target confirmed that online advertising is essential for discovering new brands.

Among the content most loved by users we find Comedy in first place while Fashion & Lifestyle is the one that has recorded the fastest growth.

In Italy the topics that go the most are:

• Animals supported by creator @jessibrugali,
• Art with @ marco.grassi.painter,
• Family with @missmammasorriso,
• Beauty with @beatricegherardini,
• Food with @chefincamicia,
• Sport with @ doda.gledi and @_sg_soccer,
• Travel with @giuligartner.

TikTok has recently announced the possibility of creating sponsorships with the launch of a program dedicated to companies and available at this link.  https://www.tiktok.com/business/apps/tiktok

In the platform for advertisers there is a very useful tool: the TikTok Video Creator Kit. Through this tool it is possible to draw on a wide range of templates to compose promotional videos with a high creative content and in line with the mood of the community.

Through Automated Creative Optimization (automated optimization of creativity), publishing the campaign is very simple as is the analysis of their income and optimization.

Le inserzioni pubblicitarie su TikTok possono apparire in quattro diverse sezioni: in feed nella sezione “per te”(in Italia al momento possono apparire solamente qui), in “pagina dei dettagli”, alla fine dei video e in “storia”.

The objectives among which TikTok allows you to choose are:

• awareness to make your brand known;
• consideration for getting more traffic to your site;
• conversion to make a purchase, download an app or perform a specific action.

TikTok also allows you to micro-segment the target audience and reach users based on parameters such as: age, location, interests, or use Custom and Lookalike audience.

The budget, as in other social networks, can be daily or overall. TikTok never spends over budget.
The actions that the budget can be spent on are CPC (cost per click), or CPM (cost per thousand impressions).

Even TikTok to monitor the performance of ads uses a Pixel with which you can keep track of the actions performed by users and you can have access to data relating to ad conversion, user actions in the app and impressions.

Since TikTok is a social network with a high involvement from the creative point of view of its users, it is possible to generate engagement with your brand also through the hashtag challenges, which are created to entice TikTokes to produce content concerning a certain theme or inspired by content already published.

These challenges were initially launched for charitable or outreach purposes. For example, among the most common of last year we can mention the #forclimatechallenge, launched in collaboration with the Red Cross and Red Crescent in favor of the environment.

Now, however, they are also widely used by brands to advertise their products.

Among all, one of the first to exploit this type of advertising was Guess with the hashtag #inmydenim who, collaborating with some well-known American TikTokes, had made this challenge viral and, inviting users to make a video wearing their looks with their favorite Guess jeans, has reached over 38 million views and created awareness involving even the youngest audiences.

Get inspired at https://www.tiktok.com/business/en/inspiration

Finally, still in the testing phase, there are the Brand Takeover advertisements. This is a full-screen image or video of a brand or product that appears to the user in the navigation flow. Takeover is the most exclusive form of sponsorship since it can only be reserved for one brand per day for each country.

If you are looking for a sponsorship, look for the most followed creators from here https://creatormarketplace.tiktok.com/?from=tiktokads_homepage and contact them to propose a collaboration!

TikTok is considered a still new social network to work on from many points of view but, given its numbers, it cannot be taken into consideration by those brands that work a lot with young people or who want to reach this type of audience.