For Four Days, I Tried to Become TikTok Famous
An Analysis of Virality, Ads and the Media of the Future.
I didn’t succeed…
I wasn’t even close…. But these four days did change my worldview on what advertising, discovery algorithms and media will be like in the future. It was a stark warning
The reason I became interested in TikTok was because I had been fascinated by its potential for marketing. A few days before I started my challenge, I used Facebook to market a charity interview event I was hosting with a CEO and I cautiously spent 0.34$ to get my advertisement on the Facebook feed of only 22 people. None of them who interacted with the ad. Yet on the same day, I posted an old random video of my friends and I at a park and, for no cost, it reached 460 people. This kind of free traffic is unlike anything I’ve seen before.
To understand the business side, I needed to understand the creator space of TikTok, what makes certain videos famous and popular, what makes videos pop out. What kind of market is there. So I began the week with a mission to learn as much as possible and try to become TikTok viral. My plan: I will create one minute lectures from my Wharton Classes and share the knowledge with the audience.
Sadly, my videos talking about the economics of a housing crash, were not fervently sought out by the “8 year old” audience. (Although, out of those who did follow my channel The average age was still incredibly young… 13 or 14???)
However here are some of my big picture take-aways
(A side note, when I discuss TikTok, I am broadly indicating the medium of short form video apps. If TikTok is banned, the same analysis may be describing another similar platform)
“People will be the new Products”
In the past, advertisers marketed products to sell to consumers… However now, in this new age, apps like TikTok are changing the meaning of marketing to encompass that of promoting individual people. Each person is now a brand. For the younger generation, building a personal brand is incredibly important, something that until now had only been concerning large scale celebrities. A life in anonymity is less and less viable. Through Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and now TikTok, Every person is expected to open a window into who they are. In this new age, having a personal mass network can be very beneficial and sometimes even necessary as leverage and social capital.
If you want to get discovered fast, use TikTok: The Discovery Algorithm on TikTok overshadows all other platforms because of the inherent app structure
The tailored algorithm to find what each person wants to watch, (what TikTokers call the For You Page) is extremely well suited to help get more people to see your content, or gain “Free Traffic”. This comes with the nature of the product. Because TikTok only allows short one minute videos or 15 second videos, every user can watch on average of around 100 videos every hour (and even more if they skip). This inherent nature of short videos allow much more content to be discovered and seen by people outside of your network. This compares to Youtube videos which can be 10–20 minutes, and just simply too long for people to watch in its entirety… Youtube is for search, TikTok is for discovering… with some caveat, the parallel can almost be drawn that Youtube is the “google for videos”, and TikTok is the “Twitter for Video”
TikTok* will be the new haven for Ads
For creators, creating ads is actually be super easy and seamless. Let’s say a well liked and well dressed TikTok star gets 5 million views each time she posts anything (Ex: Charli D’amelio). Now, in the middle of her video she off-handedly puts a small tag next to her dress saying “this dress is from American Eagle…. Find link in bio” It flashes through in seconds, leaves an impression on the 5 million people who watched the video and directly leads to click-through ads through their bio.
In advertising, the metric to evaluate the value of such advertisements is usually Cost Per thousand impressions. On Facebook and Instagram, ad buyers pay around $4 CPMs for in-feed ads and Stories. On Linkedin ad-buyers pay around 10$ CPM. So for one post with 5 million views, American Eagle should be paying the equivalent of 20,000 dollars for the same ad on Facebook, and 50,000 for the same ad on Linkedin.
Most importantly, even if American Eagle sponsored it, the ad really doesn’t distract from the viewing experience very much… and it integrates seamlessly. And for the creator, this even gives them another reason to post something since the more you post, the more potential followers can discover you .
Short Video’s are here to stay — If the host platform is TikTok is still to be determined
TikTok’s one-week retention rate stands at 26%. This is not amazing, but as network effects kick in, retention rates will continue to climb. Most importantly, the users left are avid users. Active users are on the app 52 minutes/day(BusinessofApps, 2019). I had read this quote from another article on medium and thought it was extremely thought provoking.
“We suspect Gen Z will simply treat Amazon like the Google Search of Stuff & Things and the new social platforms become the virtual mall.”
This future of short videos is extremely exciting and this will represent a game changer in how we interact, discover and purchase products. TikTok can easily continue to build out their features so they receive a percentage of the profit from every link direct that stems from TikTok.
However, TikTok does have a huge dark cloud above it as it’s parent company ByteDance is based in China. However, Gene Munster, partner at Loup Ventures explains that in his newsletter that a ban would likely be temporary, forcing TikTok to restructure its operations and relaunch to the standards set by other countries. He predicts it won’t be permanent because the U.S. has a lot to lose in banning TikTok because the vast majority of social media companies are still based in the U.S. If U.S. sends a signal that they are willing to limit social media platforms created other countries’, this will not only potentially lead to further restrictions on U.S. companies in China, but also , more importantly, encourage other countries around the world to be more willing to block foreign based social media sites into their own country , which will directly affect companies like Facebook, instagram and twitter which have a very global footprint.
It’s a very exciting and fast-moving space and I would love to hear what your view is (Comment below!). Meanwhile, I will excuse myself as my 8 year old TikTok fans are waiting for me to post my lecture on Big Data Analytics…
