Over the past few years, the adoption of TikTok has skyrocketed among US adults, with weekly usage and the popularity of the video app being particularly high among Gen Z. Data from WARC’s Marketer’s Toolkit 2022 indicates that marketers are getting on board and increasing their investment in TikTok this year.
Some 84% of the marketers surveyed for the report expect to increase their spending on TikTok in 2022. That’s close to twice the share of marketers who said they planned to increase their investment in the platform in 2021, while in 2020, only one-third of marketers intended to increase their investment.
Although previous research shows that TikTok surpassed YouTube in user engagement in 2021, YouTube still outshines the likes of Netflix and Hulu when it comes to the average viewing time per month on mobile phones. As such, two-thirds of marketers expect to increase their investment in YouTube, while another 3 in 10 (31%) expect their spending to remain the same.
Instagram is also expected to see increased investment this year for some 64% of marketers surveyed, while nearly half (47%) believe they will increase spending on LinkedIn. Other social media sites are not expected to fare as well in 2022. Only about one-quarter of marketers expect their investment in Snapchat (26%) and Twitter (23%) to grow. Instead, equal or larger shares are expecting to decrease their spending on these two social media channels this year (32% and 23%, respectively).
Social and E-commerce Investment Also Expected to Increase
More than 6 in 10 (63% of) marketers also expect to hike their spending on Amazon this year. And, while many e-commerce executives have pointed out that the competitive gap between retailers and Amazon has only gotten wider since the pandemic, close to 8 in 10 (78% of) marketers foresee their investment in e-commerce sites increasing this year. Only a scant 1% expect to see their spending decrease.
Investment in social commerce is set to climb as well — three-quarters of respondents expect to see their spending in this area grow. While the pandemic has been a driver behind the increase in e-commerce, social commerce already looked to be on the rise prior to the pandemic. Research by GfK shows that the share of US consumers who shopped via social media had increased between early 2019 and early 2020. Added to that, research by Wunderman Thompson Commerce shows that social commerce is expected to be one of the top digital commerce channels by the end of this decade.
Gaming and livestreaming are also projected for growth, with 72% and 64% of marketers, respectively, planning to increase their spending in these areas this year. On the other hand, fewer marketers expect to increase their investment in native advertising (41%) and product placement (36%). The largest share of marketers expect their spending in these areas to remain the same this year.
The full report can be found here.
About the Data: Findings are based on WARC’s 2022 Marketer’s Toolkit.
