Facebook worried as TikTok set to eclipse Twitter, Snapchat ad share

TikTok's meteoric rise has baffled Meta (formerly Facebook) as the Chinese short-video app is set to overtake the global advertising share of micro-blogging platform Twitter and photo-sharing platform Snapchat this year.

Moreover, TikTok is predicted to catch up with Google-owned YouTube by clocking $23.6 billion in ad revenue by 2024, reports The Guardian.

"Last year, it overtook the global ad take of Snapchat," the report said on Saturday.

TikTok, which was banned in India in June 2020 along with several Chinese apps in the first lot, is likely to triple its global worldwide ad revenues $11.6 billion this year -- more than $10.44 billion for Snapchat and Twitter combined.

A TikTok user spent 19.6 hours on average per month on the app last year, according to data.ai, which is equal to Facebook which is seeing its user growth stalled, and dwindling among the Gen Z and millennials.

While Facebook still has 2.9 billion monthly active users and Instagram nearly 2 billion and Meta registered $118 billion in revenue last year, the Mark Zuckerberg-run company is worried at TikTok's rise.

Facebook has been losing users for quite some time while TikTok's usage is rising in the US.

Meta's recent earnings report said that Facebook's active users dropped by almost 5 lakh at the end of last year.

Meanwhile, TikTok emerged as the top grossing non-game app in Q1 2022, generating $821 million in consumer spending in the quarter.

On Google Play, it came second to Google One, which topped the chart with nearly $250 million, according to Sensor Tower.

A latest teen survey claimed that TikTok and Snapchat are the two most popular social platforms among teens, with Instagram at the third spot. Just 3 per cent of teens said they preferred Facebook.

A Washington Post report late last month claimed that Meta allegedly paid a prominent Republican consulting firm to malign TikTok.

According to the report, Meta ran a nationwide campaign to sow distrust about one of the company's top competitors, TikTok.

The firm called Targeted Victory planted opinion pieces and letters to the editor against TikTok in major local and regional newspapers across the country, the report mentioned.

--IANS

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