TikTok has quickly emerged as an attractive platform for e-commerce businesses to advertise their products, however, it’s also become something of a counterfeiting haven.
According to World Trademark Review, while TikTok provides a great opportunity for advertisers to tap into “Gen Z” consumers (especially with the TikTok and Shopify partnership), it has also become a popular destination for counterfeiters hawking fake brand name goods.
With an estimated 800 million active users around the globe, TikTok has emerged as a major player in the social media space, competing with the likes of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat. TikTok – owned and developed by Chinese company Bytedance – has become increasingly popular amongst younger audiences thanks to the platform’s emphasis on shorter (three to 15 seconds) videos, usually used to show off dance moves, music, and other talent-inspired content.
While social media platforms have come and gone, it looks like TikTok is here to stay and has emerged as the No.1 downloaded app of 2020 so far. In October, TikTok announced a partnership with Shopify, staking claim to TikTok’s place as a viable platform for e-commerce marketplace vendors to reach a younger demographic.
Who’s Using TikTok?
According to Influencer Marketing Hub, TikTok is massively popular in India and throughout Asia. The app boasts 119 million active users in India and 400 million more in China. Across the pond, there are 30 million monthly active users of TikTok in the United States, according to Hootsuite.
There is a reason Shopify is using TikTok to target younger audiences with 49 per cent of teenagers claiming to have used the platform at least once. A staggering 69 per cent of the app’s user base is between 13 and 24 years old with the 13-17 age group representing 27 per cent of total active users.
What Makes TikTok Special?
Since Facebook launched in 2004, many social media platforms have entered the market looking to reach the same levels of popularity as the “big four”. Vine, Periscope, MySpace, Google Buzz… the list of forgotten social media platforms goes on.
So, how has TikTok been able to stick around and prove to be an attractive advertising platform? Because TikTok users are limited to posting very short videos, the platform puts a sharp emphasis on quality of content vs quantity.
The type of content posted on TikTok – teenagers lip-syncing to music or sharing something about their day – speaks directly to younger audiences and has great potential to go viral. Earlier this fall, the world saw a video by TikTok user Doggface208, featuring a man skateboarding to the tune of Fleetwood Mac’s 1977 hit “Dreams”, become massively viral. To date, the video has garnered 11.6 million “likes” on TikTok alone. It’s a great example of TikTok content’s ability to go viral quickly.
How will TikTok’s Partnership with Shopify Work?
The agreement between the e-commerce and social media platforms will allow Shopify’s more than 1 million merchants to run marketing campaigns directly from the app itself using a custom dashboard.
Much like Facebook for Business tools, TikTok’s advertising platform will enable merchants to create sharable content that is inserted into in-feed video ads, targeting users based on their gender, age, and behaviour.
Taking another page from Facebook’s advertising book, TikTok is also giving merchants the ability to insert pixels onto their web properties to monitor traffic driven to their websites by the app.
The Bottom Line
By tapping into younger audiences, TikTok has proven to be a major player in the social media game, attracting the attention of advertisers throughout the world. E-commerce merchants are no exception. The Shopify advertising tools for TikTok are now available in the United States and are set to launch in Europe in 2021.
In previous GreyScout blogs, we’ve highlighted the importance of protecting your brand from counterfeiting and the negative impact caused by unauthorized resellers online.
Although TikTok presents some unique advertising opportunities for vendors and an excellent way to start engaging a new generation of consumers, it must also be viewed as another platform for businesses to monitor and protect against potential IP infringing activity.
With the right strategy, you can ensure you make the most of TikTok as a new high traffic channel while also safeguarding your customer experience and your intellectual property from abuse by opportunistic third parties.
