Viral video app, TikTok, reportedly earned only $200-$300 million in global advertising revenue last year. However, the app’s parent company, ByteDance, is reportedly setting the bar much higher in 2020. According to The Information, the Chinese firm is targeting revenues of $500 million from the US alone this year. Valued at around $100 billion, ByteDance already has a major presence in Asia. However, it’s presence in the US and Europe is still somewhat limited.
As part of its monetization plans, ByteDance last year launched a self-serve ad platform, alongside a new site-tracking pixel and integrations with ad tech vendors. Overall, the company reportedly generated $5.6 billion in revenue in the first quarter of 2020. While the number hasn’t been officially verified by the company, if true, it represents a 130% increase YoY.
The company is apparently aiming to become about half of Tencent’s size in terms of revenues by the end of this year. Tencent reported 377 billion yuan (~$53 billion) in revenue in 2019. So it will be interesting to see if ByteDance can get close to the 200 billion yuan (~$28 billion) mark by the end of this year.
TikTok has shot up the popularity charts around the world over the past couple of years. It recently notched-up two billion downloads globally, including 1 billion downloads on the Play Store alone. The app now reportedly has 50 million daily active users in the US – about five times more than last year. It was also the second-most-installed non-gaming app in April on both Google Play and the iOS App Store with more than 107 million downloads worldwide.
