Tik Tok is a social media platform for creating, sharing and discovering short music videos. The app musical.ly was used by young people as an outlet to express themselves through singing, dancing, comedy, and lip-syncing. TikTok was previously Musical.ly, where people would upload lip-synch videos. In 2018, a Chinese tech company, ByteDance, acquired Musical.ly and merged it with its own lip-synching app, known as Douyin. The result was TikTok. 

By September 2018, it had surpassed Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Snapchat in monthly installs, with more than one billion downloads. Tik Tok defines its mission as being the leading destination for short-form mobile video and to inspire creativity and bring joy. Still, confused about what exactly Tik Tok is? Click here to see some of the most viral Tik Tok videos and challenges.  

Advertisers with a younger demographic are jumping on the Tik Tok bandwagon. There have been months when TikTok was the most downloaded non-gaming app in both the Apple and Android (Google Play) app stores. Even now, 41% of TikTok’s users are aged between 16 and 24. Brands attempting to reach Generation Z are very interested in this app for this reason. Being able to connect to your desired audience in a native and entertaining way is the best way to reach Generation Z in 2020.

TikTok started experimenting with advertising in late 2018, although it didn't take off until well into 2019. It can cost brands $50,000 to $100,000 to take over a popular TikTok channel, for instance, and the cost of a hashtag challenge has a flat fee of $150,000 for six days, with firms spending additional dollars on promoting the challenge. This process has changed slightly now that TikTok has introduced short native video ads. This makes ads much more affordable for brands. Tik Tok has expressed concern about their feed becoming flooded with ads so it will be interesting to see how they continue offering ads to brands