What is Happening?

TikTok’s parent company ByteDance generated more than $3 billion in profit on over $17 billion in revenue during 2019 according to Bloomberg.

These numbers indicate that ByteDance, the world’s most valuable startup is still growing at a significant rate with revenue doubling from 2018 ($7.4b) thanks largely to TikTok.

The company has emerged as one of the tech industry’s most surprising success stories and is the first Chinese-built app to see break out success among western users.

At a glance:

• TikTok, released in 2016 has already been downloaded 2+ billion times
• ByteDance has 1.5 billion monthly active users to its family of apps
• Gaming, Search and Music are all areas the company is pursuing
• The company recently poached Kevin Mayer (ex Walt Disney) to become CEO of TikTok

What Does it Mean?

🔥 Demand for users downtime is only going to get hotter.

As people spend more time at home these days, our distribution of time spent exposed to different types of advertising has fundamentally changed (think less outdoor and more time spent looking at screens).

For the right brands (💃 visually appealing brands that can create engaging content for their specific audience), platforms like TikTok, which have over 800 million monthly active users offer significant global reach for advertisers and another way to access audiences at home.