TikTok feted brands and agencies with its premiere TikTok World event. The virtual presentation introduced new features designed to help advertisers become adept at leveraging TikTok’s creators, content and community. Despite its sizzle and viewership, TikTok lags behind other social media companies in terms of ad revenue. TikTok began accepting ads about a year ago and generates roughly $1.3 billion annually in U.S. ad sales. Compare that to the $5.5 billion Statista predicts for YouTube this year, or eMarketer’s $48 billion assessment for Facebook and Instagram, $2.6 billion for LinkedIn and $2.2 billion for Twitter.

The New York Times called TikTok “the least trusted major social media platform” among brands, based on a Kantar survey of more than 900 marketers, and went on to note that “Half of major brands, including Nestlé and Audi, have no TikTok presence,” according to a study by WARC.

Concerns about TikTok exposing kids to unsavory content, the company’s record on privacy and the Trump administration having labeled the company’s Chinese owner, ByteDance, as a security threat with censorship proclivities are among the reasons cited by NYT for advertiser wariness. The criticism was qualified by the fact that “trust is growing.”

TikTok is doing all it can to encourage the momentum, laying out plans to make its platform creative, safe and smooth for brands looking to build market share. “It’s an old technology on a new medium, and it’ll be interesting for the traditional agencies of the world to embrace,” TikTok product strategy chief Jiayi Cao was quoted as saying in NYT.

To help wrap them in that embrace, the company spent its World business showcase “painting a clearer picture as to how TikTok will monetize its now billion-plus audience, and help creators earn money for their efforts,” reports Social Media Today.

Among the highlights was TikTok’s enhanced Creator Marketplace featuring greater performance insight, real-time campaign monitoring, better sorting tools, and a matchmaking capacity to help sponsors explore “creators for every campaign, brand voice and budget. You can filter based on the type of content they post, where they’re located, their average views, and more,” per TikTok.

Social Media Today lists additional new tools:

• Open Application Campaigns enable brands to list their campaigns for interested creators to self-apply.
• TikTok Creative Exchange, a self-serve portal that will match brands with vetted creative service providers to help them produce high-performing ads, suited to their brief and objectives.
• Through the Creative Center, brands will be able to explore a showcase of the top-performing ads, view details on the latest platform trends, and search through TikTok’s audio library to help inspire their creative process.
• TikTok’s also launching a new, dedicated video editor, which will help guide brands through the creation process, including visual editing tools and copyrighted music, while it’s also partnering with Vimeo Create to provide new video templates and tools to streamline content creation direct from the app.
• Dynamic Scene will essentially create TikTok clips for you, based on your existing assets, which you can then test in the app, and promote the best performers.
• Dynamic Showcase Ads can be used to generate awareness and drive app downloads by promoting popular, relevant products to potential customers.

Related:
TikTok’s New Ad Products Invite Users to Interact with Taps, Swipes, Likes and More, TechCrunch, 9/30/21