TikTok isn’t just racing YouTube and Meta to be on every smartphone or mobile device. It has a plan for practically any screen you can imagine.
“There are billions of additional screens outside of mobile phones,” Dan Page, TikTok’s global head of partnerships, new screens, told AdExchanger. “We want to be in all of them, in some way, shape or form.”
Page joined TikTok in 2021, after long stints at Canadian telco operators TELUS and Rogers Communications. That telco experience was part of helping pick up distribution for TikTok’s nascent TV app.
Since joining, Page has expanded TikTok’s new screens program from TV device manufacturers like Vizio, LG and Amazon, that carried a native version of its TV app, to out-of-home screens wherever they may be.
“Then I wanted to be in screens in Times Square, in restaurants and bars, any screen you look at,” he said.
The latest addition, he said, is a partnership announced earlier this month with Ivee, a rideshare startup that puts tablets and screens in Uber or Lyft cars.
“That’s 10,000 more screens we can showcase to the world what TikTok is and showcase creators,” he said.
New screens new revenue?
TikTok’s new screens program has been around three years and now reaches hundreds of millions of assorted screens.
But TikTok is still slow-rolling the monetization. The social app doesn’t sell ads on those new screens and devices. The new screens program also doesn’t integrate with TikTok Shop, the on-platform ecommerce service.
“The reason it doesn’t have ads is it’s not ready yet,” Page said of the TikTok TV app. “Until we make it the best experience possible, we’re not going to monetize on it.”
The new screen product is different than TikTok in one major way – screens in airports, bars, taxis and the like tend to play without audio. The platform curates a feed of creator-approved posts that are attention-grabbing without noise and stream to particular venues, such as airports or large out-of-home screens.
While TikTok isn’t selling ads, it hasn’t stopped its distribution partners from doing so. Loop Media, which places TVs in restaurants and other commercial venues, carries a TikTok channel that streams posts from the platform, but every three minutes or so Loop serves an ad. Likewise, Ivee sells ads on its in-car tablet network, including via its new TikTok app distribution.
If a TikTok advertiser wants to extend to OOH media, the platform will facilitate that campaign with partners like Ivee or Loop, Page said. But those aren’t TikTok-native advertisers or ad units served by TikTok.
Other TikTok screens carry different business models. Reach TV is a network of screens in airports. There, TikTok sends a three-minute packet of entertaining posts per hour of other content.
New screens, new people
TikTok isn’t just investing in new screen distribution because someday it may turn the spigot and begin serving ads and monetizing content itself.
The product is useful for advertisers, Page said, even if TikTok isn’t serving the ads.
“Most advertisers make something very specific for TikTok,” he said. But programs like Ivee or Loop are ways for TikTok to show advertisers that ads, sponsored creator posts or even just top-end organic content they produce can be coupled with an OOH program to amplify the TikTok mobile app.
“We’re always growing this network of screens to showcase not only content, but also some really creative ways to advertise,” he said.
Although TikTok is a breakout hit, having surpassed social networks like Snapchat and Pinterest to become a major scaled player like Facebook and Instagram, the company still thinks hard about how it reaches new people.
For people who are older than 25 and haven’t tried TikTok yet, the eponymous mobile app probably isn’t going to be the first or next exposure to TikTok content. They’re more likely to see an actual stream of TikTok posts in a rideshare, an airport, a bar, etc.
“We’re not just the singing and dancing app anymore,” Page said. “To those customers that maybe have never seen a TikTok, we’re able to showcase the mature side of TikTok.”
In that way, the new screens product is more important as a way to introduce the social network to nonusers, or even to those who are skeptical that they would find interesting or educational content on TikTok.
“That’s why we continue to do these deals,” Page said
