Tiktok. A new era of the search engine.
Back in 2023, Adobe published a study outlining TikTok’s incredible growth and favorability among Gen-Z as their go-to search engine for…
Back in 2023, Adobe published a study outlining TikTok’s incredible growth and favorability among Gen-Z as their go-to search engine for quick, informative content like recipes and book reviews. The popular yet controversial social media platform is ever-evolving. With its growth comes a monumental influence on society, some of which we are only just starting to realize.
The platform boasts an incredible 1 billion active users, growing month on month, with the average daily time spent on the platform more than doubling from 27 minutes in 2017 to 58 minutes in 2024. Adobe says some of this usage is due to changing search trends, with younger users using TikTok as a search engine — 2/5 of all Americans, to be precise.
This staggering shift in digital behavior is opening a new world of commerce, with brands, businesses, and TikTok shops emerging to capture traffic in various niches and subcultures. From #BookTok to #SkinTok, trends, micro-societies, and new-age influencers (think girl next door, not global fashion model) are directing traffic, influencing commerce trends, and generating more than 3.8B$ of annual consumer spending. From shopping for skincare to booking your next vacation, TikTok’s quick, often personal, easy-to-digest video format functions as the new Google — and Google, of course, is worried.
TikTok has an impressive ability to evolve with the ever-shifting digital landscape, even amid global scrutiny due to data privacy concerns, national security issues, and geopolitical influence. Young people don’t seem to care, as they join in droves and use the platform for increasingly longer periods of time.
TikTok’s surge in search-based content discovery features makes it a go-to tool for finding answers and accessing valuable information. Video search results, which have a staggering 41% higher clickthrough rate than text, underscore the importance of visual search in SEO and marketing strategies. This visual-centric approach, leveraging images and videos, is crucial for modern digital marketing.
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