After months of testing, TikTok is betting big on ecommerce. The platform launched its Shop feature in the United States this week.
TikTok announced the update with a post on their blog, saying, “TikTok Shop will now bring shoppable videos and LIVE streams directly to For You feeds across the country – and give brands, merchants, and creators the tools to sell directly through shoppable content on the TikTok app.”
TikTok shopping has already been available (and extremely popular) in the UK and a handful of Asian countries before this week. They first began testing their e-commerce product in the US back in November 2022.
In their blog post announcing the new feature, TikTok says, “With text posts, we’re expanding the boundaries of content creation for everyone on TikTok, giving the written creativity we’ve seen in comments, captions, and videos a dedicated space to shine.”
The tools in TikTok’s Creative Center are only getting better. The platform has just launched a Keyword Insights tool to help advertisers uncover top-performing keywords and phrases in TikTok ads.
Marketers can use the tool to explore “trending script keywords,” which may appear in voice-overs, text overlays, or ad captions.
Just enter a term in the search bar to start gathering information — you can narrow your search results by region, industry, ad objective, keyword type and timeframe.
According to an internal document, “The heating feature refers to boosting videos into the For You feed through operation intervention to achieve a certain number of video views. The total video views of heated videos accounts for a large portion of the daily total video views, around 1-2%, which can have a significant impact on overall core metrics.”
TikTok is rolling out the TikTok Shop feature in the United States. So far, only a limited number of merchants have been invited to test the social commerce solution.
TikTok Shop is already available in the UK and a handful of Asian countries, including Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, and the Phillippines.
The reigning champ of short-form video is about to diversify: TikTok’s new in-app gaming experience may be officially announced as soon as November.
Games will reportedly be featured as one of the tabs on TikTok’s home screen. As has now become standard with other mobile games, games will be accompanied by ads. Users will also be able to pay for additional content.
After announcing its creation back in May, it looks like TikTok has finally launched its Pulse program to share ad revenue with top creators.
The program’s rollout hasn’t been officially announced, but reports are now circulating on Twitter that select creators are receiving eligibility notices.
Woah.. TikTok launched their Pulse program!?
Creators with 100,000+ followers will receive a 50% split of ad revenue from TikTok
Brands will put ads on TikToks that are in the top 4% of performers on any given day
Creators can choose to display their latest, most popular, or favorite TikToks on their Linktree landing pages. In addition, visitors will be able to play videos within Linktree without having to navigate away from the app.
TikTok may be the reigning champ of short-form video, but it looks like the platform has its sights set on more. They’ve now introduced photo mode, a carousel-style format made for sharing multiple still images in a single post.
TikTok’s new photo posts look similar to Instagram’s carousels, but they’re a bit more robust. Users can add music to soundtrack their images, and viewers can either swipe through each photo or let them scroll automatically.
TikTok’s usually the platform to beat when it comes to new features. Still, in September, the indisputable rise of BeReal proved that sometimes, even ByteDance can take a few tips from the competition.
After months of testing, TikTok has introduced a new downvote option that makes it simple for users to flag “irrelevant or inappropriate” comments.
🔔 New feature incoming. Earlier this year, we started to test a new way people could identify comments they believe to be irrelevant or inappropriate. After some testing, we're releasing it globally. 📲 Read on for 3 fast facts
While TikTok users have long been able to report comments that violate the platform’s community guidelines, the new downvote is meant to help TikTok’s moderators identify negative behavior that’s more annoying than harmful.
