Legal battle aside, here’s all you need to know about TikTok right now

So, when Blake Chandlee, TikTok’s president of global business solutions, hit London last Thursday to meet U.K. CMOs at the Behind the Screen event, there was no shortage of hot topics to chew on with him and Kris Boger, TikTok U.K.’s general manager of global business solutions. Well, except for the elephant in the room: TikTok’s ongoing legal fight to avoid a forced split from its China-based parent company, ByteDance — or risk being banned from the U.S. entirely.

Their responses have been lightly edited for brevity and clarity.

How are advertisers responding to the prospect of TikTok being either banned or spun off from ByteDance in the U.S.?

As TikTok has stressed all year, it’s business as usual, according to the execs. The ongoing legal battle hasn’t impacted the way advertisers work with TikTok — in fact, they’re doing more, not less, despite the uncertainty. As Chandlee put it, the conversation has shifted from why use TikTok to how brands can use TikTok more effectively.

“Our business is growing phenomenally,” he said. “Compared to the numbers I’ve seen from the quarterly earnings of our peers, our annual year-to-year growth rates are roughly 2x to 3x those.” 

Boger added that he believes this shift is in line with the platform’s move from being a cost center to a profit center. 

“Previously, we had conversations around driving softer marketing metrics, but now when we talk with our clients about how we’re moving their bottom line,” he said. “Increasingly, those are the types of conversations we want to be having.”

That’s TikTok’s challenge: figuring out how to scale a big business powered by performance advertising so it can truly rival Google and Meta for those coveted ad dollars. It’s a work in progress. While Chandlee noted ad spend is coming from both branding and performance budgets, he believes it’s performance dollars that will propel TikTok to the next level over the next six to 12 months.

What’s up with TikTok’s user growth slowing in the U.S.?

Rumors have been swirling all year about TikTok’s user growth stalling stateside. Sure, a slowdown was inevitable as the platform reached critical mass, but it’s another headache for execs who know just how crucial those growth stats are in the battle for ad dollars. For a platform aiming to be a permanent contender in the digital ad space, a dip in momentum is something they’ll have to address head-on.

“All platforms will see some leveling,” Chandlee explained. “If you’re adding an incremental number of users a year, the percentage of year-to-year growth changes because of your base. We still have pretty robust growth. Even in the US, it’s actually accelerated for the last six months.”

As for what that growth looks like in real numbers? Don’t hold your breath. TikTok remains a private company and isn’t compelled to share much beyond the basics. The official stats stand at 1 billion monthly active users (MAUs), with the U.S. accounting for 170 million and Europe for 150 million — at least for now.

Still, Chandlee did suggest that when the team looks at the proportion of daily active users (DAUs) to MAUs, TikTok’s numbers are pretty strong. “I think they’re ahead of Meta,” he said, caveating that TikTok is an entirely different platform to Meta. 

Where TikTok stands on politics

TikTok has landed squarely in the middle of the U.S. presidential election this year. With memes and creators driving the conversation on both sides, the platform has become a crucial battleground for candidates. But despite its outsized role in shaping the narrative, TikTok won’t be cashing in on the political frenzy — at least, not directly.

The senior management team made a decision five years ago to not take political advertising anywhere in the world.   

“We felt it wasn’t consistent with inspiring creativity and bringing joy. Sometimes the ads can get negative pretty quickly,” Chandlee explained, noting that the team wants to steer clear of hate speech and ill informed rhetoric as much as possible.

Still, politicians aren’t entirely absent. They’re just showing up organically. Remember Kamala Harris riffing off brat summer? Or even Donald Trump’s own tiktoks?

“We have very strict policies around what can and can’t be done [on TikTok],” Chandlee continued. “We have community guidelines. We set up and manage centers to educate the public about voting. We’ve built up intentional capabilities around misinformation and the use of AI so people can’t spread misinformation. We’ve got lots of policies and technology to protect against that. These are industry level challenges, but we take them very seriously as a company.”

The playbook on TikTok’s plans for sport

Given TikTok’s massive influence on culture, it’s no surprise the platform capitalized on 2024’s summer of sports. From renewing its NFL partnership to teaming up with creators around FIFA and the Women’s World Cup, TikTok has spent big to expand its content offerings. So much so, in fact, that some observers speculated it was aiming to challenge traditional sports broadcasters with its own distinct brand of content. But according to Chandlee, those takes are off the mark.

“We’re not trying to replicate Sky Sports or ESPN, or whatever it might be,” he continued. “Those are known, well-established platforms. We’ll partner with them to bring that content to TikTok in bite-sized pieces that’s consistent with users’ expectations in terms of the content on our platform.”

Chandlee pointed to a different approach—offering glimpses of athletes’ personal lives or their partners’ perspectives, positioning TikTok as the go-to for behind-the-scenes insights away from the field.

“We’re still working on developing how brands can take advantage of that,” he said. “But for now we have products like Pulse” – TikTok’s advertising product that enables brands to place ads next to the top performing and most popular videos.

TikTok in Europe

With TikTok’s U.S. legal battle, there have been reports that the platform has doubled its efforts in Europe. And that would make sense, given that TikTok still needs to ensure its livelihood elsewhere is stable depending on how the U.S. decisions play out. 

“Europe has always been a major focus for us, so I wouldn’t say anything’s changed in the past few years,” said Boger. He added that this also includes the U.K. because a number of media agencies, which are TikTok’s biggest customers, are based there.

So where has this extra “push” come from? According to Chandlee, most of TikTok’s product and engineering team sits in the U.S. and typically seek feedback from U.S. advertisers. But as he pointed out, European agencies and advertisers see things through a different lens.

“We’ve been telling them that just because they’re getting feedback from U.S. advertisers, does not automatically imply that it will work in Europe,” said Chandlee. “So those teams want to spend more time in Europe to better understand the nuances of the market. “There’s more of a push and a presence in the European market to get feedback that will add to what our product development pipeline looks like.”

The challenge, however, is its presence there could be short-lived, adding another layer of uncertainty. Earlier this year, European Union Commission President Ursula von der Leyen suggested that a region-wide ban could not be ruled out.

The deal with alcohol advertising on TikTok

When the platform first launched, there was no alcohol advertising. Why? TikTok’s audience at that time skewed young. It was since introduced in Latin America a few years ago, it’s now scaling in the U.S., but still in the U.K. and Europe, it’s a no go. As always, these decisions hinge on local regulations.

“There’s complexity to it in terms of ensuring we’re reaching the right audiences, and that’s shared by those brands,” said Chandlee. “But we try to be overly conservative in how we do it and manage it.”

That’s because from TikTok’s POV, the user experience still has to come first. 

“We’ve stepped away from a lot of revenue to maintain the user experience in a really positive way,” added Chandlee. 

The same goes for weight loss products — those brands are barred from advertising on TikTok as well.

“I don’t know if anybody else [other platforms] is making those decisions, but we’re in a position where we can,” said Chandlee. “Over time, they can change if we get to the right place and have the right controls in place. But the policies will always be more conservative than our competitors set.”