The Evolution of E-commerce and Advertising on TikTok

TikTok relies heavily on e-commerce, particularly in the United States. What about in France?

Arnaud Cabanis Indeed, our TikTok Shop offer was relaunched in the United States, and a large sales force was recruited. Now we can manage the entire end-to-end process from live recording to product sales. TikTok Shop is now available to all American brands that want to use it, and it’s a big commercial success. And even if it is still not e-commerce that drives TikTok’s revenue, the brands are very happy with this American relaunch. On the other hand, at European level, there is no specific announcement on this subject. The product is still available in the UK, where it works very well.

What is the share of revenue between e-commerce and advertising?

In Bytedance’s revenues in general, we are 50% vs 50% between advertising and e-commerce. But for TikTok, advertising still represents 90% of revenue. The remaining 10% is made through the sale of products and especially influence. But the potential for e-commerce growth is enormous. It already works a lot with our partnership with Shopify, for smaller merchants. The consumption model is evolving, and the way of buying on the internet is evolving with it. We see this with the proliferation of content, such as online tutorials, or live broadcasts, directly on e-commerce platforms.

Do you have any news on this subject?

Yes, we have just launched Video shopping Ads, it’s our big end-of-year launch, now in beta. It’s a video entertainment experience, still in long format, but which will bring up catalogs of personalized products, when previously, we only had a banner with a single product, which did not give sufficient choice so the person can click. The ROI is almost doubled with this new format because we show more products that are different but adapted to the user.

TikTok’s population has changed in recent years. Does this change the average basket?

Yes, now 67% of users are over 25 years old. Millennials are really driving TikTok’s growth. But let’s not forget that Gen Z, in certain categories, was quite powerful. Brands like L’Oréal very quickly found their account on the platform. On the other hand, yes, the price levels have changed slightly. This is especially observed with new categories that have been launched on the application, such as travel or mobility. A lot has been created in recent months in these areas on the platform.

Has the CPM evolved?

The average CPM broadcast on the application is always between one and two euros, but it can change depending on the targeting layers, in particular with the offer that we launched for very specific content, Pulse Premiere. There, the CPMs will mainly be between 5 or 10 euros. It’s really for brands that want to sponsor content in very specific segments. We launched it in France with Brut, with whom we developed editorial themes mainly around sport and entertainment. The content is available to sponsoring brands, who can come and present themselves in partnership.

Has the way of marketing also evolved on the platform?

Today, in France, we are generally equal between the revenues generated on notoriety and the revenues generated on marketing performance. Last year we saw a big acceleration in e-commerce, and many clients asked us to simplify tools, because they are still relatively understaffed for TikTok. We have a lot of advertisers and agencies who tell us that they don’t have time to work on marketing on TikTok because their teams are already very busy on other platforms. We know the difficulties of recruiting in agencies, and have therefore tried to simplify the tools to save them time. This is what we do by integrating generative AI. In addition, in the first half of 2023, we saw, like everyone else, a deceleration in digital investments, and a growth in demand for marketing performance. So we will follow the market trend and a lot of things will happen on this topic.

What specifically have you launched for agencies?

We launched three things around the simplification of agency needs: Smart Performance Campaign, Smart Creative and Carrousel Ad. The first allows us to no longer have to create “ad groups” [des segments de ciblage]. The teams directly enter daily objectives (web conversion or app conversion) and the tool will directly fetch the information from the website (or app) and depending on the budget set up and the creations, will propose segments automatically, and optimize them every hour. As TikTok is an instant media, the concept of time is very important, and the teams could not update the targeting parameters all the time. Here the tool optimizes automatically, and the manager only has to regularly check that everything is going well. Today, 80% of performance has been improved. Smart Creative is the twin brother of this tool, which carries out Dynamic Creative Optimization with AI. Teams enter the “mandatory” masks they want for their video campaigns, and the tool creates and tests different creative possibilities, then selects the best ones, with artificial intelligence. For example, for travel, it can adapt the destinations, the sounds, the songs, all the elements of the video. And the two tools work together. That is to say, Smart Performance Campaign and Smart Creative communicate with each other.

And finally carousel ads?

It allows you to create photo carousels, which allow brands, such as Luxury brands, which prefer a Luxury universe, to create dreams through images. Or e-retailers who don’t make videos, and who need photo tools, because they will never have the teams and the means to make videos for all their products. When traveling for example, when you have a large number of destinations, photos are easier to manage. We have also evolved our attribution analysis system to better understand the purchasing journey within the platform, and in particular its duration, so that brands have better transparency over long journeys. It is a real support tool for them, so that they understand better and can better choose the allocation they want.