TikTok positions itself as a complement to TV advertising
New study from the social media giant shows viewers remembered a brand better if they saw it on a streaming service first, and later on TikTok.
Lynk
With $20 billion in ad spend up for grabs during the TV upfronts ad haggle, social media giant TikTok is looking to position itself as a complement to those ad buys.
TikTok commissioned a study to see how linear TV, streaming services, and TikTok impacted brand recall. It found that when participants saw a brand on TikTok, and then saw it on TV, they had a 4% lift in visual attention to brand cues, and a 6% lift in aided brand recall, meaning they correctly chose the brands they saw from a multiple-choice list in a post-ad exposure questionnaire. If participants saw a brand on a streaming service, they had a 7% lift in visual attention and an 8% lift in aided brand recall.
Viewers paid even more attention if they saw a brand on TV or a streaming service, and then saw the brand on TikTok—with a 16% lift in visual attention to branding and a 13% lift in product placements. They also had a more positive association with a brand after seeing it on streaming and on TikTok, with 11% of viewers feeling “this brand’s ads are likable.”
Sign up for Ad Age’s Influencer Marketing newsletter.
With TikTok garnering more of brands' ad budgets, it remains to be seen how this will impact TV ad negotiations, when media networks look to secure a bulk of their ad commitments for the next season.
Brands have been looking to find ways to incorporate TikTok marketing into other screens and platforms. Applebee’s did this in August with a TV commercial that compiled TikTok dances to Walker Hayes’ song “Fancy Like.” McDonald’s took its revamped logo by Emily Zugay and applied it to its Twitter page. And with consumers often multitasking while watching TV, it makes sense for brands to be present on nearby screens.
Old Navy took a trending TikTok video and used that to fuel its spring TV commercial. Samuel Beasley posted a simple video with audio from Bruno Mars and Anderson .Paak’s Silk Sonic album. Beasley captioned it with, “We about to get the most fire Old Navy commercial ever.” Fans started commenting on what they would want to see, like “slow-mo family jump” and “kids doing hopscotch.”
More recently, Vrbo brought the essence of its TV commercial onto TikTok by using a hashtag challenge, #AVrboForTogether. Creators used the hashtag and the TV commercial audio to show off their vacation home rentals, racking up 9 billion views on TikTok.
“We wanted to really bring to life the idea of celebrating the people that make staying in a Vrbo so special,” Nisreene Atassi, senior director and global head of social media and influencer engagement for Vrbo, said in a statement. “As one of the fastest-growing social media platforms out there today, TikTok felt like the perfect place for us to launch this effort as part of our larger campaign media ecosystem, including TV.”
