POV: TikTok Partners with The Trade Desk

Background:

TikTok, the popular short-form video platform is partnering with DSP The Trade Desk to make its inventory directly available to advertisers across Asia-Pacific. Currently the partnership is available in 11 markets including Southeast Asia, India, Australia, Japan and Russia and is limited to PMPs but will expand to Open RTB at a later stage.

Details and Implications:

As the popularity of TikTok grows, so does its ad offering. Globally the app has been downloaded 1.65bn times and 323mn times in India alone. The platform’s growing popularity has steadily enticed more brands to launch campaigns on the platform in various forms. This partnership between The Trade Desk and TikTok provides more opportunities for brands to potentially put themselves in front of millions of consumers.

TikTok’s VP of monetisation in India said: “the key objective of this is to enable more brands to tap into TikTok's short-form mobile video as part of their omnichannel campaigns”. TikTok is the first short-form video platform to integrate its ad inventory with The Trade Desk and it will allow The Trade Desk clients to purchase TikTok inventory alongside their other media buys.

Campaigns that run on the Trade Desk platform will be pseudonymous, not directly identifying users and partners will not be allowed to provide personal data. This stands by TikTok’s privacy commitment following scrutiny over privacy concerns for its younger users.

The first company to take advantage of this partnership is PepsiCo with a campaign for the Lays portfolio in Thailand, planned by Mindshare. The ‘smart-phone demographic’ was ‘absolutely critical’ for the brand according to Arun Mehra, PepsiCo senior director of marketing services and this partnership made reaching that audience easier and more precise. The brand is now looking to expand the campaign across the whole region.

TikTok offers innovative and creative ways for brands to connect with their audience, including Branded Hashtag Challenges, where users can get involved by jumping on hashtags and creating their own content. A trend that is extremely popular and drives many of the trends on the platform.

Earlier this year TikTok partnered with iflix, a subscription on-demand video service, to bring short-form videos to audiences in 13 countries in Asia. This is one of many ways that the platform has been generating awareness and as the platform grows even bigger, its ad offering will too.

Summary:

TikTok becoming available for programmatic buying through The Trade Desk is a positive development, however the onus will be on having the right brand safety measures in place as it is viewed as a developing platform, which brings with it certain challenges. Mindshare already partners with The Trade Desk so is well placed to help clients understand their programmatic advertising options on TikTok.

Further Reading:

Campaign | The Drum | Mobile Marketer | WARC