The TV industry seems to have no answer to TikTok
Short form, algorithm-driven viewing is here to stay, and CTV won't change that
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TikTok wants to be on TV.
The company talks openly about conquering the “2 billion screens outside of mobile,” and CTV was a major point of emphasis for the Byte Dance-owned company at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.
After spending the past few days at the show, my question is-
Why isn’t TV trying to get TikTok?
Back in June, there were a slew of stories about how TikTok’s stunning growth had all of TV and entertainment worried. “Everyone has a TikTok problem,” wrote Troy Young. When users spend upwards of two hours a day on a still relatively new app, those are hours traditional media companies can’t get access.
Yet you wouldn’t know it by glancing around CES, where as usually, giant uber thing TVs abound - nor would you at the Aria, where the advertising wing of CES gathered, showing power of streaming, and the fast growing CTV ad sectors. Netflix and Disney are selling, and everyone is doing FAST channels, including a new batch coming from Warner Discovery. TV is going to be fine, and more likely better than ever, once you combine the big screen with digital targeting.
Except for the fact that time is finite, and millions of people want to spend their time gaping at short form videos they didn’t choose to watch.
You can very fairly kill Facebook and Google for rolling out blatant TikTok ripoffs - but at least they are doing something. And the thing thing is, people actually use Reels and Shorts, and they companies may even end up make some money on those products.
What’s TV answer to the TikTok threat other than a blind believe in CTV?
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Shouldn’t Netflix - which bills itself as a tech company - be experimenting with a more TikTok UI or delivery system. You laugh, but why wouldn’t Peacock be working on a short-form sub-product? Couldn’t ESPN build a TikTok for sports highlights? What about a algo feed of Bravo, or one for Survivor or The Voice or America’s Got Talent or even snippets of dramatic scenes from nearly two decades Grey’s Anatomy or all of the Sheridanverse shows?
There seems to be plenty of room -and also an opportune moment - for TV to innovate on what constitutes ‘watching TV.’
Yet at CES, the emphasis was on the unique value of TV’s long-form engagement. Or as Jeremi Gorman, Netflix’s President, Worldwide Advertising, described it, “quality content, that people love, that they are actually choosing, not just being algorithmically served,” in what was a thinly veiled shot at TikTok.
Certainly, you could look at the recent breakout success of Netflix’s “Wednesday,” along with “Dahmer” and a few others, as evidence Gen-Z still craves long form series, not just session upon session of zombifiying streams of clips. The counter argument being, how often do those types of breakouts shows come along- and what is happening to these audiences; attention spans and entertainment expectations over time?
“In another time, MTV would be doing their own TikTok,” said one executive I spoke with at CES. Today, MTV is barely a brand. The company does have a strong game on Instagram and TikTok, but it’s far from innovative, and not something it really owns. There is an opportunity for far more experimentation and risk taking in the TV realm when it comes to how content is discovered and served up.
You’d be right to point out that big TV companies don’t have a great track record of building their own tech, or trying to compete with social media platforms (again, MTV is a good example of this…then again, look at Hulu). Regardless, here’s the thing - if TikTok gets traction on TVs, it’s going to be even harder for TV to compete when it’s one click away.
Already, TikTok is working on programming partnerships with Vevo built around streaming, but the larger ambition is to get the TikTok app usage on TV
There are reasons to believe that that may never happen, since TikTok is so inherently mobile, and about the swipe. But things change.
In fact, there are a growing number of reasons to believe that TIkTok could literally go away tomorrow (read Casey Newton’s very compelling analysis). The Feds don’t like it’s Chinese ownership at all (side questions, why wouldn’t the US government be encouraging the EU to go after TikTok for the same kinds of GDRP violation as Meta?).
Give how precarious TikTok’s sheer existence may be, all the more reason for big TV companies be ready to pounce. Yet it seems to have its head in the CTV sand.
It may require a culture change that won’t be easy to pull off. As Matt Story. Global Brand Partnerships & Advocacy Programs at Visa put it, regarding the state of our industry in 2023, “What I think is mind boggling that we are talking about platforms that many of us don’t use,” he said. “And if you don’t have someone one that uses the platform or understands why they use the platform in the room, you thee platform. you’re going to make mistakes.”
TV can’t afford those right now.
Extremely clear to me especially as TikTok seems to be shifting to start taking over YouTube's block, even with a landscape-mode long-form video format
I would imagine that they're waiting to see what happens, thinking that there's no reason to spend a lot of money trying to steal traffic from a dying platform. So far, 19 states have banned TikTok on government-issued devices. The primary concern is that, according to Chinese law, the government has access to data collected and stored by Chinese companies. It's not hard to see why that is a concern. And you have to worry about not only what is posted, but what may be in the background -- like the title of a confidential report. Or a computer screen logged into a porn site. And then there's all the metadata attached to posts.
And then you have TikTok challenges, some of which have caused real harm. Kia and Hyundai, for instance, recently filed a class action lawsuit against TikTok after a challenge showing how their cars can be easily "hotwired," causing thefts to skyrocket.
There are other concerns, too. Teenagers post incredibly stupid things on TikTok. Might those posts someday be used to blackmail them when they hold a government position or a job where they have access to highly valuable intellectual property? (Hopefully, having grown up with little concept of digital privacy, they'd have the sense to say, "So what? I was a stupid teenager?," but you never know.
So, if it were me, I'd start quietly making plans to fill the vacuum, but I wouldn't invest resources in trying to beat TikTok now.