TikTok shops for advertisers, Apple apps get reviewed
originally published 10/2/21
TikTok is ready for advertisers, e-commerce, it says
At TikTok’s online event, TikTok World, the company announced a range of new initiatives, product updates and advertising formats in an effort to woo more marketers to its platform. On the e-commerce front, TikTok expanded its set of shopping partners beyond pilot partner Shopify. Earlier this year, the video platform began piloting TikTok Shopping in the U.S., U.K. and Canada, in a deal that allowed Shopify merchants with a TikTok For Business account to add a Shopping tab to their TikTok profiles and sync their product catalogs to the app to create mini-storefronts. Now, TikTok is rolling out to new brand partners for TikTok Shopping, including Square, Ecwid and PrestaShop, with Wix, SHOPLINE, OpenCart and BASE coming soon. It also introduced a fuller slate of solutions for TikTok commerce, including ad products and later this year, a TikTok Shopping API. The app now offers a trio of in-feed ad products for online shopping: Collection Ads which feature swipeable and tappable product cards; Dynamic Showcase Ads (DSAs), which are automatically generated ads; and Lead Generation ads.
The company also presented its new plan to ramp up advertiser investment with a new promise of “brand safety” and the launch of several new and interactive ad formats, ranging from clickable stickers to “Choose Your Own Adventure”-type ads to “super likes” and more. The ads are meant to encourage TikTok users to tap, swipe and use gestures to interact with the ads’ content. There’s even an ad where users get to direct the storytelling, and a mini page that lets brands connect users with their message directly in the TikTok app.
To date, marketers haven’t carved out as much of their spending for TikTok compared with other major platforms, like Facebook and Instagram. But TikTok parent company ByteDance has been making inroads in the global ad market, with annual revenue across its apps more than doubling in 2020 to reach $34.3 billion. In the U.S., TikTok was expected to bring in $500 million in 2020, up from $200-$300 million in the year prior, according to a report by The Information. (Some of that is from in-app purchases, of course.)
As TikTok has scaled its ad business, its ad prices have been steadily increasing, too. Bloomberg noted this summer it was jacking up home page takeover ads, its most valuable real estate, to more than $2 million on top days — like holidays. Reuters also noted that TikTok saw a 500% increase in the number of advertisers that were running campaigns in the U.S. from the start of 2020 to the end, though ad sales were still small compared with other major platforms. That continues to be the case in 2021. In fact, TikTok was not even broken out in eMarketer’s recent tabulation of U.S. ad revenues, where it’s instead lumped into an “Other” category with other, smaller social networks (like Tumblr), which, combined, are expected to reach $1.3 billion in 2021.
The company also this week announced a new milestone with 1 billion monthly active users worldwide.
Apple finally lets users review its own apps
Apple has put itself on equal footing with its rivals by allowing users to rate and review its first-party apps that are available for download in its App Store. That means users can now leave reviews for built-in apps like Mail, Music, News, Stocks and Calculator and others. Some apps are holding up better than others. News is sitting at 2.5 stars as users complain about ads, even in the paid version, personalization elements, nags to buy Apple News+ and more. Podcasts has just 2 stars, Apple Music has 3.5 stars. Fitness is doing well with 5 stars, and Wallet app has a solid 4….