April 8, 2021

TikTok is such a global phenomenon these days, and growing so fast, it’s not always easy to take stock and understand precisely just how big Bytedance’s app has become.

TikTok’s US company has recently been contacting advertising agencies in the States using a B2B pitch deck under its TikTok For Business sub-brand.

This deck has now leaked online, and contains an array of new information about TikTok’s audience and their behavior.

Perhaps the most headline-worthy of these stats is this one: as of October 2020, according to TikTok’s own analytics, the TikTok app was reaching 732 million monthly active users (MAUs) around the world, and more than 100 million MAUs in the United States.

To put that into perspective: 732 million active users is more than double Spotify‘s global monthly active user base as of the end of 2020 (345 million), but less than half the 2 billion-plus logged-in monthly active users YouTube pulls in around the world.

That said, while we’re taking stock of TikTok’s progress, we should also say that October 2020 was six months before this article was published (in April 2021). As we address later in this post (see: ‘When Will TikTok Hit A Billion Users?’ below), TikTok is likely to have added tens of millions of monthly active users to that 732 million number since it was recorded.

The leaked TikTok pitch deck, as per Business Insider, also reveals some demographic information about TikTok’s modern-day audience.

It reports that, based on TikTok’s internal data sources as of October 2020, nearly half (42%) of all active users on the platform were between the age of 18 and 24.

A further 17% of TikTok users at this point were aged between 13 and 17, says the deck.

Just 7% of TikTok users, however, were over the age of 45.

“IF TIKTOK CAN KEEP UP THE GLOBAL GROWTH IT DEMONSTRATED BETWEEN JULY AND OCTOBER 2020, WE’D EXPECT IT TO TOP A BILLION GLOBAL MONTHLY ACTIVE USERS (MAUS) BY MAY 2022.”

The biggest development for TikTok’s ads business out of these four is likely to be Dynamic Product Ads, which automatically retarget product advertising to consumers who’ve demonstrated online interest in those ads before.

At one point in the deck, TikTok claims that 47% of its users say they have “bought something seen on TikTok” in the past, and that 67% of its users agree TikTok “inspired them to shop even when they weren’t looking to do so”. This app could have major influence to how music is consumed.