In a nutshell: if there’s one metric that really exemplifies TikTok’s meteoric rise of late, it’s the app’s ad revenue. The video-sharing platform’s global revenue is expected to overtake Twitter and Snapchat combined this year and is expected to catch up with YouTube in 2024.
Last year, TikTok overtook the ad revenue of that other teen/young adult app, Snapchat. It should also surpass Twitter by the end of this year. Research firm Insider Intelligence predicts that TikTok’s revenue will triple in 2022 to $11 billion, more than Snapchat ($4.86 billion) and Twitter ($5.58 billion) combined.
If TikTok continues on its current trajectory, it should catch up with YouTube and its $23.6 billion in ad revenue by 2024.
Despite its popularity, Chinese-owned TikTok has faced plenty of controversy over the years, from the CEO of Reddit calling it “spyware” and “fundamentally parasitic,” to Joe Biden’s staff being told to withdraw from their phones in 2020. Donald Trump’s administration tried to get ByteDance to sell its international business to a US company; a group of state attorneys general have launched an investigation into TikTok and its effects on young people; and it was one of many Chinese apps banned in India two years ago.
But TikTok is unlikely to be concerned about all the negative press in the United States, given that more than half of its revenue this year ($6 billion) is expected to come from the United States.
TikTok already has more than 1.5 billion users worldwide and captures the younger market that Meta aspires to but continues to lose, although it still has some way to go before catching Facebook (2.9 billion). users) and Instagram (2 billion users) or their ad revenues of $85 billion and $82 billion, respectively. However, Facebook still felt pretty nervous about hiring a lobbying firm that portrayed its rival as a foreign-owned app and “a real threat.”