Over the past two years, TikTok’s popularity has risen at an astronomical rate, placing it in a position to be the best social media platform overall. However, one major impediment to its otherwise unanimous crowning is its lack of creator revenue opportunities – a weakness that its key competitors, Meta and YouTube, have been more than happy to exploit.
Today marks a particularly momentous time for TikTok as it announces its new ‘TikTok Pulse’ Program, which will enable advertisers to place ads alongside the most popular content in the app. At the same time, it provides creators with a new revenue-share pathway that doesn’t require them to set up their own brand deals.
As TikTok explains:
“Marketers today are looking for the opportunities to be on the pulse of relevant cultural moments. TikTok Pulse places brands at the heart of TikTok communities and alongside the trending content that is driving conversation and action.”
We Have A Pulse!
So far, here are the known mechanics for TikTok Pulse – brands will be able to place their ads alongside TikTok clips that made it into the top 4% performing clips of the day. These performance benchmarks are based on engagement and views, enabling brands to see maximum views by being tagged to trending content.
Pulse advertisers will be able to choose from 12 categories to place their ads, allowing them to position their branding next to the most relevant content for a given tag, say, ‘beauty’. Ads will only pop up on ‘Verified Content’, ensuring brand safety. Additional campaign measurement tools, including third-party brand suitability and viewability verification, ensure transparency in the process.
Now, TikTok’s most popular creators will be able to generate revenue simply by posting, which is largely similar to YouTube’s Partner Program, which will be an essential step for TikTok as it looks to maximize its growth where it can. Direct revenue share programs just won’t cut it. Especially for smaller creators, getting any cash payout from TikToks is a big deal, but for more established stars, it’s a matter of maintaining an income that can fuel their lifestyles, requiring more sustainable monetization pathways. TikTok’s Creator Fund alone cannot provide all of this, but maybe, now with the boost of TikTok Pulse, a new, more viable avenue to make money off of TikTok clips helps make the platform a more appealing choice.
The Wrap
Though it has exceeded Twitter and Snapchat’s combined revenue, TikTok is still nowhere near YouTube’s revenue share tools that allow it to pay out billions of dollars to creators each year. Since TikTok has a long way to catch up, this new program is a big deal for the platform since it would directly address one of TikTok’s greatest concerns. While it won’t bring TikTok to YouTube’s level anytime soon, it’s at least a step in that direction. Given TikTok’s popularity, if they can capitalize and further refine this new program down the line, then they might just be able to give even YouTube’s monetization a run for its money.
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