TikTok marketing statistics & facts

Why TikTok matters to marketers

In less than a decade, TikTok has grown from a lip-sync app into one of the most important marketing platforms in the world. Its short, vertical videos, served by a recommendation algorithm that shows content from accounts people do not follow, give brands a way to reach huge audiences without first building a following. It has become a search engine for younger users, a launchpad for viral products and, through TikTok Shop, a fast-growing online store. For advertisers, it is now the third force in social media advertising after Meta and Google-owned YouTube.

The numbers show the scale. TikTok advertising tools reached about 1.59 billion adults worldwide at the start of 2025, WARC forecasts that TikTok will earn around 38 billion dollars from advertising in 2026, and TikTok Shop sold 64.3 billion dollars of goods worldwide in 2025, almost double the year before. In January 2026 its US business passed into a new joint venture controlled by American investors, ending years of uncertainty about a ban. This report sets out the data on TikTok audiences, advertising, commerce, engagement and ownership. For the size of the user base itself, see our data on the countries with the most TikTok users.

How many people can marketers reach on TikTok?

TikTok does not publish official monthly user numbers, so marketers rely on the audience figures in its advertising tools. According to DataReportal, which tracks these tools, TikTok ads could reach 1.59 billion users aged 18 and over worldwide in January 2025, equal to 27.5 percent of all adults on earth. The largest ad audiences were in the United States, Indonesia and Brazil.

America leads, Asia follows: the US had 136 million adults reachable by TikTok ads in January 2025, ahead of Indonesia with 108 million and Brazil with 91.7 million.

The list is striking for how many emerging markets it contains. Pakistan, the Philippines, Bangladesh, Egypt and Vietnam all rank in the top ten, reflecting the young, mobile-first populations that have made TikTok one of the most popular apps across Asia, Latin America and the Middle East. China does not appear because TikTok is not available there; ByteDance runs a separate app, Douyin, for the Chinese market. India, once one of the largest markets, has banned TikTok since 2020.

Ad reach figures also move with regulation and methodology. DataReportal notes that global TikTok ad reach fell by 96.1 million, or 5.7 percent, in the three months to January 2025, even though it was up 2 percent on the year, a reminder that these numbers are estimates produced by the platform itself. More detail on penetration by market is available in our data on TikTok penetration by country and TikTok downloads by country.

TikTok in the United States

The United States is the most valuable TikTok market. According to DataReportal Digital 2026 data, TikTok ads reached 153 million adults in the US by late 2025, 55.7 percent of the adult population, up 15.2 million or 11 percent in a year. That still leaves it behind YouTube, Facebook and Instagram in reach, but ahead of Snapchat, X and Pinterest.

Fourth in reach, first in growth: TikTok ads reached 153 million US adults in late 2025, behind YouTube, Facebook and Instagram but growing 11 percent in a year.

US users are also highly engaged. According to DataReportal data from app analytics providers, TikTok Android users spend an average of about 1 hour 37 minutes a day in the app, opening it around ten times a day, with sessions lasting almost 10 minutes on average, more than on YouTube. For marketers, that attention is the core of the TikTok proposition: the average user sees a large number of videos every day, and each is a chance for a brand to appear.

Who uses TikTok?

The TikTok advertising audience is young and slightly male-skewed. In January 2025, 30.7 percent of adults reachable by TikTok ads were aged 18 to 24 and 35.3 percent were aged 25 to 34, so two thirds of the adult audience was under 35. Men made up 55.7 percent of the ad audience and women 44.3 percent.

Two thirds under 35: adults aged 18 to 34 made up 66 percent of the TikTok advertising audience in January 2025.

The audience is getting older over time. Adults aged 35 and over now account for about a third of the TikTok ad audience, including 8.4 percent aged 55 and over, as the platform has spread beyond its Gen Z base. Teenagers aged 13 to 17 also use TikTok in large numbers but are not included in adult ad reach and are subject to strict limits on advertising. For the gender split in more detail, see our data on the distribution of TikTok users by gender.

TikTok advertising revenue

TikTok is one of the fastest-growing advertising businesses in the world. WARC, the marketing intelligence company, forecast in March 2025 that TikTok would earn 32.4 billion dollars from advertising in 2025, up 24.5 percent, implying about 26 billion dollars in 2024. In January 2026, WARC forecast US TikTok ad revenue of 14.5 billion dollars in 2026, equal to 38 percent of the global total, which implies global ad revenue of about 38 billion dollars.

On track for about 38 billion: TikTok ad revenue is forecast to grow from about 26 billion dollars in 2024 to about 38 billion in 2026.

That growth is faster than at the biggest rivals. WARC expected TikTok ad revenue to grow 24.5 percent in 2025, against 19 percent for Instagram and 9.3 percent for Facebook, and in July 2026 it projected that TikTok would overtake YouTube in global ad revenue by 2030. YouTube earned 40.4 billion dollars from ads in 2025, according to WARC. TikTok has particular strength in performance and commerce advertising, where marketers can link spending directly to sales. For context on its rivals, see our data on the revenue of selected social media companies and social media ad spend worldwide.

How much comes from the United States?

The United States is the largest source of TikTok advertising money, but its share is falling as international markets grow faster. WARC estimated that the US would generate 14.5 billion dollars of TikTok ad revenue in 2026, 38 percent of the global total, and 16.7 billion in 2027. Its earlier forecasts put the US share at 43.3 percent in 2022.

Six in ten dollars from abroad: about 62 percent of TikTok ad revenue is forecast to come from outside the United States in 2026.

This diversification helped reduce the financial risk of a US ban, which hung over TikTok from 2020 until the joint venture deal closed in January 2026. Markets such as Indonesia, Brazil, Mexico, the United Kingdom and the Gulf states have become increasingly important sources of revenue, especially as TikTok Shop has expanded.

TikTok Shop: social commerce at scale

TikTok Shop, which lets users buy products directly from videos, livestreams and a dedicated store tab, has become the largest social commerce platform outside China. According to Momentum Works, TikTok Shop sold 64.3 billion dollars of goods worldwide in 2025 across 16 markets, up 94 percent. Southeast Asia remained its largest region, with gross merchandise value doubling to 45.6 billion dollars, while US sales grew 68 percent to 15.1 billion dollars.

Almost doubled: TikTok Shop sales rose to 64.3 billion dollars worldwide in 2025, including 45.6 billion in Southeast Asia and 15.1 billion in the US.

How people buy is changing too. In 2025, 50 percent of TikTok Shop sales came through short videos, 36 percent through the shop tab and 14 percent through livestreams, up from 10 percent a year earlier. In the US, beauty and personal care was the largest category, followed by womenswear and underwear and sports and outdoors. There were 803,500 US stores, but more than half recorded no sales at all, while more than 2,000 sold over 1 million dollars each, showing how concentrated success on the platform can be. Around 15.4 million creators promoted products through the TikTok Shop affiliate programme in the US.

Engagement: TikTok still leads

For brands, TikTok offers far higher engagement than other major social networks. According to the 2026 Social Media Industry Benchmark Report from Rival IQ, now part of Quid, the median engagement rate per brand video on TikTok was 2.01 percent, compared with 0.30 percent per post on Instagram, 0.21 percent on YouTube and just 0.03 percent on X.

Almost seven times Instagram: brands on TikTok earned a median 2.01 percent engagement per video in 2026, against 0.30 percent per Instagram post.

Engagement on TikTok has softened as more brands crowd onto the platform and algorithms change, but it remains far ahead. The benchmark found that brands post about two TikTok videos a week, fewer than on Instagram, because video takes more effort to produce. Industries such as pharmaceuticals, higher education, alcohol and energy stood out for engagement on TikTok in 2026. Marketers also rate TikTok highly for return on investment, as shown in our data on the social media platforms with the highest ROI and the platforms used by marketers worldwide.

TikTok as a search engine

TikTok has become a place where people search, not just scroll, which makes it increasingly important for brand discovery. In an Adobe Express survey of 807 US consumers carried out in January 2026, 49 percent said they had used TikTok as a search engine, up from 41 percent in 2024. People use it to look for recipes, product reviews, travel ideas, beauty tutorials and local restaurants, often preferring short videos from real users to lists of links.

Search on TikTok complements rather than replaces Google for most people. The same survey found that the share of Gen Z consumers who said they were more likely to rely on TikTok than Google fell from 8 percent in 2024 to 4 percent in 2026, as AI chatbots such as ChatGPT also became part of how people look for information. For businesses, TikTok search is still a major opportunity: 58 percent of the 200 US small business owners surveyed had used TikTok for business promotion, and 38 percent had relied on TikTok influencers to promote or sell products. TikTok has responded by launching search ads and, in 2026, brand Search Hubs that appear at the top of search results.

Ad formats and AI tools

TikTok offers a range of advertising formats. In-feed ads appear between organic videos in the For You feed and are the most widely used. TopView ads are the first thing users see when they open the app, and Spark Ads allow brands to promote existing organic videos, including those made by creators, as paid ads. Branded effects, hashtag challenges and livestream shopping ads round out the options, while search ads and GMV Max campaigns target people who are actively looking for products or shopping on TikTok Shop.

Like Meta and Google, TikTok is pushing advertisers toward automation and AI. Its Smart+ campaigns automate targeting, budgets and placements, and its Symphony creative suite uses generative AI to produce videos, digital avatars, voiceovers in more than 30 languages and translations of existing ads. At its TikTok World event in May 2026, the company announced TopReach, which combines the TopView and first in-feed positions in a single coordinated buy, along with new tools linking search, creator content and commerce. For many small businesses, these tools lower the cost of producing the volume of video that TikTok requires.

Regulation beyond the US

The US joint venture resolved the biggest regulatory threat, but TikTok faces scrutiny elsewhere. In May 2025, the Irish Data Protection Commission, the lead privacy regulator for TikTok in the European Union, fined the company 530 million euros for transferring the personal data of European users to China without adequate protection, one of the largest fines under the General Data Protection Regulation. The European Commission has also investigated TikTok under the Digital Services Act over advertising transparency, the protection of minors and election integrity. Several countries restrict advertising to children and teenagers, and India has banned the app entirely since 2020. For marketers, these rules shape what data can be used for targeting and which audiences can be reached, especially younger users.

Creators and influencer marketing

Much of TikTok marketing happens through creators rather than brand accounts. Brands pay creators to feature products, run branded hashtag challenges, and increasingly use affiliate commissions through TikTok Shop, where creators earn a share of each sale they drive. Creator-led content often outperforms polished brand ads because it looks native to the platform. The biggest accounts command enormous audiences, as shown in our ranking of the most followed TikTok accounts, while trends spread through hashtags that can gather billions of views, tracked in our data on the top TikTok hashtags.

The platform has built tools to support this economy, including the TikTok Creator Marketplace, now called TikTok One, which connects brands with creators and provides audience data, and Spark Ads, which let brands promote creator videos as paid ads. For smaller businesses, TikTok Shop affiliate programmes have lowered the barrier to working with creators, since sellers pay only when a sale is made.

The new US joint venture

For advertisers, the biggest risk on TikTok was regulatory. A 2024 US law required ByteDance to sell the US business or face a ban, and the app briefly went dark in the United States in January 2025. The issue was resolved on 22 January 2026, when a new company, TikTok USDS Joint Venture, took over the US operations. Oracle, Silver Lake and the Abu Dhabi investment firm MGX each hold 15 percent, ByteDance keeps 19.9 percent, affiliates of existing ByteDance investors hold about 30 percent and other investors about 5 percent.

American control: new investors Oracle, Silver Lake and MGX hold 45 percent of TikTok in the US, and ByteDance keeps just under 20 percent.

The joint venture is led by chief executive Adam Presser, formerly head of operations at TikTok, and its board includes TikTok chief executive Shou Zi Chew alongside representatives of Silver Lake, Oracle and MGX. Oracle is responsible for storing US user data and overseeing the recommendation algorithm. For marketers, the practical effect has been continuity: the app, advertising tools and TikTok Shop have continued to operate, removing the threat of a ban that had held back some US ad budgets. Content moderation remains an area of scrutiny, as shown in our data on TikTok accounts removed by reason.

TikTok vs Reels and Shorts

The success of TikTok has reshaped its rivals. Instagram launched Reels in 2020 and YouTube launched Shorts in 2021, both copying the full-screen, algorithm-driven video feed that TikTok popularised. YouTube Shorts now generates more than 200 billion daily views worldwide, according to WARC, and Meta has made Reels the fastest-growing part of Instagram. For marketers, this means short-form video skills now pay off across several platforms, and many brands publish the same vertical videos on TikTok, Reels and Shorts.

Each platform has different strengths. YouTube has the largest reach, with ads reaching 254 million people in the US in late 2025, and earns more from advertising, at 40.4 billion dollars in 2025. Facebook and Instagram have more mature targeting and a larger base of older users. TikTok stands out for engagement, cultural trends and commerce: its brand engagement rates are several times higher than on Instagram, and TikTok Shop gives it a direct link between entertainment and purchase that YouTube and Instagram are still trying to match. The contest between the three will largely decide how short-form video advertising budgets are split over the next few years.

What TikTok advertising costs

TikTok advertising is generally cheaper than Meta advertising in terms of cost per thousand impressions, although costs vary by market, audience and season. Industry benchmarks from 2025 put average US CPMs between about 6 and 13 dollars depending on the advertiser type, with click-through rates of around 1.8 to 2 percent and an average cost per click of about 0.31 dollars in one agency dataset. Costs rise in the fourth quarter, when retailers compete for holiday shoppers, and are usually highest in the United States, the United Kingdom and the Gulf states. Because TikTok ads must feel native to the feed, creative quality has a large effect on results, and advertisers typically refresh videos more often than on other platforms.

What comes next for TikTok marketing

TikTok enters the second half of the 2020s in a stronger position than seemed likely a few years ago. Its US future is settled, its ad revenue is growing faster than its rivals, and TikTok Shop has shown that entertainment and shopping can merge at scale outside China. The main challenges are competition from Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts, which copy its format, rising advertising costs as more brands arrive, softening organic engagement and continued regulatory scrutiny in Europe and elsewhere over data and the protection of young users.

For marketers, the direction is clear: short-form video, creator partnerships and social commerce are becoming central to the marketing mix, and TikTok is where those trends are most advanced. Our wider coverage of social media, Instagram, YouTube and the platforms marketers plan to use provides more context, and TikTok downloads by quarter tracks the growth of the app itself.

TikTok marketing in numbers

Together they show why TikTok has become an essential part of the marketing plan for brands of every size.

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