TikTok Ad Revenue Sees 300% Compound Annual Growth Rate

On Wednesday, Jiemian News learned from a source that ByteDance’s short-video platform TikTok saw a compound annual growth rate of 300 percent in advertising revenue. In addition, ByteDance’s advertising revenue in China moderated, but the e-commerce business of Douyin – TikTok’s sister app for the Chinese mainland – sustained growth.

In response to the rumor that “ByteDance’s advertising revenue in 2021 exceeds the sum of all TV stations in China,” ByteDance stated that the news was untrue, following an investigation.

As previously reported by The Paper, ByteDance registered zero month-on-month growth in ads revenue in China after July 2021. It saw slight full-year increases in revenue at home, driven by growth in its e-commerce business, but its revenue barely grew year-on-year, if e-commerce business is excluded.

The source also indicated that ByteDance’s uptick in revenue for the full year of 2021 was primarily fueled by the rapid growth of its e-commerce business in China and by the fast growth of TikTok overseas. 36Kr reported in February that TikTok’s gross merchandise volume (GMV) for e-commerce in 2021 topped out at about $6 billion, with about 70% or more from Indonesia and less than 30% from the U.K.

SEE ALSO: TikTok Shop to Support Cross-Border E-Commerce Merchants

Douyin and TikTok contributed significantly to ByteDance’s revenue. Sensor Tower data suggests that the two apps drew more than $258 million from the global app store and Google Play in February 2022, twice as much as a year earlier, reigning at the top of the global mobile app (non-game) revenue chart. This followed revenue of $128 million in January.