TikTok takes over Europe

How’s it going at TikTok?

TikTok is now considered the most relevant promotional platform for musicians worldwide. The rapid consumability of content, the precise algorithm, and the countless tools and functions offer the chance to have enormous reach even without a huge fanbase. This is paying off: TikTok is experiencing massive growth! New features are added regularly and the numbers speak for themselves.

One billion monthly users

In July, TikTok reached a milestone: One billion monthly users worldwide. This point was crossed far quicker than competitors like Instagram ever did. The accomplishment can be credited largely to the rapid growth over the past year. As part of a legal battle with the US government, it was reported in July 2020 that there were 689,174,209 monthly active users at the time. That means that in one year, the platform grew by a whopping 45%.

More watch time than YouTube

But it’s not just about the users. One of the most important KPIs of any video platform is the usage time – and here, TikTok really kicks off. In this area, the app owned by the Chinese multinational corporation ByteDance has now overtaken even veteran top-dog YouTube.
The average TikTok user consumes more than 24 hours of content per month on the platform. On YouTube, it is only 22 hours and 40 minutes. Of course, with YouTube’s over 2 billion monthly users, its total cumulated watch time is still significantly higher – but there is certainly a clear trend emerging here.

The European market

TikTok is currently investing massive sums into the European market in particular. But it seems to be paying off: In 2020, the profit generated in Europe grew by an extraordinary 545% compared to the previous year – from around 22.9 million euros in 2019 to no less than 147.79 million euros. On the other hand, there were also exorbitant expenses: The costs in 2020 amounted to 557.55 million euros – 442% more than in 2019. This is not least due to the fact that TikTok hired more than 1,000 employers to work in Europe.

Shopping on TikTok

TikTok is aggressively investing in its own future. But to ensure that the profit will one day exceed the cost, they not only want to generate more users but also tap into more monetization options. For that, TikTok is collaborating with e-commerce platform Shopify. In the US, Canada, and the UK this shopping feature has already been rolled out. There, users can browse the app for the product catalogs of Shopify sellers and instantly acquire specific products that they have just seen in a video clip.

What’s next for TikTok?

TikTok is rapidly growing and continually expanding its features, and now, with its integration of Shopify, they might just revolutionize the online shopping industry and generate gigantic revenues. The enormous losses that TikTok reports are not uncommon in the expansion phase of a company of this size and point towards an even more accelerated growth in the future. After all, these are targeted investments. There are still numerous markets for TikTok to enter, in any case – but for now, the focus seems to lie on Europe.