Despite TikTok’s major success early on, the app still feels like a bit of a mystery to those interested in using it for marketing purposes. Until recently, not much was known about the wildly popular social media app TikTok. In fact, since launching in 2018, Byte Dance, its parent company, wasn’t very fond of disclosing many metrics at all. All we really knew up until recently was that the app went viral and managed to top global app download charts, mostly thanks to a huge ongoing Gen Z fanbase.
But now, thanks to sites like Influencer Marketing Hub, CNBC and many others, we know a lot more.
To help you make informed decisions about your social media strategy and whether or not TikTok might be a good fit for your brand, we’ve put together a list of stats to read before diving into the app to see for yourself.
TikTok stats to know in 2021
- According to Oberlo, TikTok is one of the fastest-growing social media platforms in the world!
- In September 2021, TikTok celebrated reaching 1 billion monthly active users.
- The app has been downloaded over 3 billion times worldwide.
- TikTok was the most blocked social media app by parents in 2020.
- It took 200 days for a Chinese development team to create the original version of Douyin/TikTok.
- TikTok is the first app outside of Facebook to reach the milestone of 3 billion downloads.
- In 2019, TikTok more than doubled its revenue to $17 billion, up from $7.4 billion the previous year.
- More Gen Zs now use TikTok than Instagram.
- The app’s biggest audience comes from China, where it’s called Douyin.
- According to Business of Apps, 35% of TikTok’s global audience is between the ages of 19 and 29, and 28% is under 18.
- Hootsuite’s Global State of Digital 2021 reports that 51% of global TikTok users are male and 49% are female.
- TikTok is now available in more than 200 countries.
- TikTok users spend an average of 89 minutes per day on the app.
- TikTok surpassed Facebook as the most downloaded app in the world in 2020.
- Users aged 4-15 spend an average of 80 minutes per day on TikTok.
- The most followed TikTok account belongs to dancer, Charli D’amelio with a total of 127.2 million followers.
- One of the earliest branded hashtag challenges on TikTok was #InMyDenim sponsored by the popular brand, Guess. Videos with this hashtag received a total of 53.2 million views.
- The now-famous rapper, Lil Nas, credits the success of his song “Old Town Road” to TikTok after he uploaded it and it went viral on the app, propelling the song to number one on the Billboard Top 100 in 2019.
While TikTok is less transparent about its revenue when compared to other social media platforms, here’s what we do know for sure. The app now offers five advertising tiers, mostly aimed at big brands. One of which is the branded hashtag challenge which reportedly costs 150,000 dollars per week!
Despite the launch of TikTok For Business back in 2020, there still remains a lot to be seen when it comes to TikTok as a company and its major metrics. However, as the company continues to attract more advertisers, it’s likely that it will start to reveal more and more information relating to the app and its user base over time.
