According to recent reports, TikTok is planning to enter the e-commerce field in the United States. If this happens, it will probably start a head-on confrontation with Silicon Valley giant, Facebook. Insider report claims that TikTok has briefly introduced many new features to advertisers. The company hopes to launch these features in 2021. One of the features includes an online shopping tool that allows online users to share product links and automatically earn commissions from any sales.
Video creators will be able to share links to any product they like. In fact, they don’t need any official affiliation with the brand. If you like the product and share a link, you earn a commission from every sale.
TikTok also intends to launch the brand to display its product catalog on the platform and will launch a mobile version of the TV shopping channel. After users see the products displayed by TikTok influencers, they only need a few taps. Prior to this, Wal-Mart announced at the end of last year that it was testing online shopping functions.
With regards to this report, TikTok has declined comments. However, Douyin has already launched similar services in China.
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TikTok is suitable for live shopping
Jack Smyth, Creative Technology Officer of Mindshare, a subsidiary of WPP, the largest advertising and communications group in the UK, said: “TikTok is very suitable for live shopping.”
These new features will enable TikTok to further compete with Facebook. Earlier, TikTok had announced a partnership with e-commerce platform Shopify.
Last year, Facebook’s Instagram launched new tools in some countries to make it easier for people to buy goods and launched a digital shopping channel on its main Facebook website. At the same time, Instagram copied TikTok’s business model, called Reels.
In addition, the company plans to further develop its self-service advertising platform this year. It will allow brands to easily place their own ads online rather than manually through sales representatives. In addition, the company plans to improve its advertising targeting tools, including user tracking.
The biggest attraction of TikTok lies in its large and partially untapped young user base. The company stated that 40% of TikTok users do not have a Facebook account, and 63% do not use Twitter.
Karyn Spencer, Chief Marketing Officer of Whalar, a well-known marketing group, said: “With TikTok, you can see billions of page views. On other platforms, page views are mostly measured in millions. “