TikTok, a short-video app created by the world’s most valuable startup ByteDance, is out seeking advertisers in the United States, Digiday reported on Tuesday, citing one of the app’s pitch decks that is currently making the rounds.
TikTok appears to be speeding up monetizing its huge user base worldwide to help its owner ByteDance meet its 2019 revenue target of RMB 100 billion (US$14.8 billion). The Chinese app maker has also ramped up engagement with European advertisers recently.
TikTok and the version of the app that’s available in the Chinese mainland, Douyin, together have more than 500 million active users worldwide.
In the pitch deck it sent to US ad agencies, TikTok claims it has 26.5 million monthly active users in the US. 60% of these are between 16 and 24 years old and 63% are female. These users, on average, each day open the app eight times and spend 46 minutes there. Video views add up to 37 billion per month on average.
To further highlight its advantage over other social media, TikTok says that its average session duration is 294 seconds (nearly 5 minutes), even longer than Facebook’s 208 seconds, citing App Annie data from October 2018. Average session duration measures how much time people are spending in the app or website during each stay.