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TikTok wants to lock in premium budgets and compete for TV dollars with new programming and measurement offerings.
The social giant, which is announcing the initiatives today at its NewFronts presentation in New York, is expanding its slate of programming within its TikTok Pulse product, which lets brands target the top 4% of trending videos and offers placements against videos from premium publishers.
TikTok also announced partnerships with iSpot.tv and Nielsen One Ads so that advertisers can compare the effectiveness of their TikTok buys with TV buys along the same currency.
“Recent research has proven that 58% of all TikTok campaign impressions reached a unique audience unexposed to the TV portion of the campaign,” said TikTok’s blog post detailing the NewFronts announcements. “Advertisers who added TikTok to TV campaigns reached an incremental 22% of their audience.”
Notably absent from the pre-presentation news was the recently passed legislation that could ban TikTok in the U.S. in 2025. We’ll be on-site at the event with any updates.
More granularity for buyers in TikTok Pulse
Brands will have more flexibility and control of their TikTok Pulse buy with a new product called Custom Lineups, where a brand can choose which kind of content it wants to appear against within Pulse’s inventory of top 4% videos.
For example, a brand opening a store in New York might use Custom Lineups to specifically run ads against popular New York-centric videos. Or a brand debuting a new yellow product might want to run ads around videos in this color palette, a TikTok spokesperson said.
The tool includes generative artificial intelligence that can help brands come up with more relevant suggestions for where TikTok should target. In the New York example, AI could help a brand with new categories such as “Times Square” or “bagel,” the spokesperson said. But this is still targeting within TikTok’s top 4% of videos.
TikTok is also expanding its partnerships with premium publishers. The platform is offering a tool called Tentpole Moments, which will let brands target ads against Vogue’s coverage of the Met Gala and NBCUniversal’s coverage of the Summer Olympic Games. More tentpole events will be announced later this year, the spokesperson said.
More premium publisher content
Paramount and the National Hockey League are joining TikTok Pulse Premiere, which lets brands target ads against videos from top publishers.
Moreover, brands can now specific intellectual property within publishers. For instance, Paramount is letting brands buy against videos from the likes of MTV, CBS Sports, The Daily Show and Entertainment Tonight. NBCU, which was already part of Pulse Premiere, is making TikToks available from Saturday Night Live, America’s Got Talent, Today, Bravo and others.