Digiday+ Research deep dive: Are publishers shifting their social video efforts to focus on TikTok over YouTube?

Digiday’s surveys found that, while the percentage of publishers who use YouTube is still a bit higher than those who use TikTok, the group’s YouTube usage is trending downward while TikTok usage continues to rise. A little under three-quarters of publisher pros (71%) said this year that their titles posted content on YouTube in the past month, compared with just over two-thirds (67%) who said the same of TikTok.

However, the 71% of publishers who said this year they’re using YouTube is a slight drop from the 73% who said they were using the platform last year and a significant drop from the 83% who said they were using it in 2022. Meanwhile, the 67% of publishers who said they’re using TikTok this year is a notable jump from the 61% who said they were using the platform last year and an even bigger jump from the 51% who said they were using it the year before.

Publishers’ ad spend on both platforms looks rather different from usage though, Digiday’s survey found. Fewer than a third of publishers (29%) said this year that their titles purchased advertising on YouTube in the past month, and fewer than one-fifth (19%) said the same of TikTok — leaving lots of room for both platforms to grow in the coming years if they focus efforts on selling advertising to publishers.

It’s possible that publishers’ growing use of TikTok is due in part to how much the group values the platform when it comes to branding. Digiday’s surveys found that the percentage of publishers who think TikTok is valuable or extremely valuable to their branding efforts spiked this year, compared to last year.

Sixty-one percent of publisher pros told Digiday this year that TikTok is valuable or extremely valuable for branding, up significantly from 46% last year and 44% the year before. Breaking down the data further, the percentage of publishers who said the platform is valuable for branding (as opposed to extremely or somewhat valuable) saw a particular lift this year — 39% of publishers said in 2024 that TikTok is valuable for branding, up from a quarter (25%) in 2023. Meanwhile, the percentage of publishers who said TikTok is not very valuable for branding dropped from 14% last year to 4% this year, and those who said it’s not valuable at all saw a similar drop: from 11% last year to 4% this year.

While the change year over year for TikTok in this category has been more dramatic, YouTube’s value for publishers’ branding efforts has inched upward over the last few years and remains at a strong percentage. Sixty-two percent of publisher pros said this year that YouTube is valuable or extremely valuable for branding, up slightly from 60% last year and 57% the year before.

It’s also worth noting that zero respondents to Digiday’s surveys this year and last year said YouTube isn’t valuable at all for branding. But the percentage of publishers who said the platform is extremely valuable for branding dropped off quite a bit this year, from 30% in 2023 to just 8% in 2024. At the same time, though, the percentage of publishers who said YouTube is valuable (as opposed to extremely or somewhat valuable) for branding rose from 30% last year to a whopping 54% this year.

Clearly, both YouTube and TikTok are strong components of publishers’ branding strategies — but the same isn’t true when it comes to their revenues, Digiday’s surveys found. Fewer than half of publisher pros (43%) said this year that YouTube is valuable or extremely valuable to driving their company’s revenues, and just over a third (37%) said the same of TikTok.

And while the percentage of publishers who said YouTube is valuable (as opposed to extremely or somewhat valuable) grew from 29% in 2023 to 35% in 2024, the percentage who said the platform is extremely valuable fell from 21% to 8% over the same period. TikTok, on the other hand held fairly steady in this category when we look more closely at the data, with 33% of publishers saying this year that the platform is valuable to driving their company’s revenues, compared with 30% last year, and 4% saying this year it’s extremely valuable, compared with 7% last year.

One additional data point to note is that the percentage of publishers who said TikTok isn’t valuable at all to driving revenues fell from 25% in 2022 to just 11% in 2023, only to come back up to 25% in 2024. So clearly publishers haven’t completely cracked TikTok quite yet.

TikTok’s value to publishers’ branding is reflected in how often they post on the platform compared with YouTube, Digiday’s survey found. One-third of publisher pros (33%) told Digiday this year that they post on TikTok every day — a percentage that has remained steady since 2022. The percentage of publishers who post on YouTube every day has also remained steady over the last few years, but it does come in lower than the percentage who post on TikTok every day: 27% of publisher pros told Digiday this year that they post on YouTube every day.

For both platforms, a few times per week or once per week (what we’ve categorized as “at least once a week”) is the most common posting cadence for publishers — with TikTok also coming in slightly higher than YouTube in this category as well. Fifty-seven percent of publisher pros said this year that they post on TikTok at least once a week (significantly higher than the 37% who said the same last year, but on par with the 53% who said so the year before). Meanwhile, 54% said this year that they post on YouTube at least once a week (a percentage that has remained steady since 2022).

Twenty percent of publisher pros said this year that they post on YouTube one, two or three times per month (or “at least once a month” in our data), while a much lower 10% said the same of their posting cadence on TikTok this year.

Interestingly, Digiday’s survey found that publishers invest more in creating original content for YouTube than they do for TikTok — with both platforms seeing a big jump in that kind of investment since last year. Ninety-two percent of publisher pros told Digiday this year that they invest at least a little in creating original content for YouTube, and 91% said the same of TikTok — so in this instance the platforms are about even. Last year, though, 71% of publishers said they invested at least a little in original content for YouTube, while 67% said the same of TikTok, illustrating that big jump.

The biggest difference between the two platforms comes in when we look at the percentage of publishers who invest a lot in creating original content, which is where YouTube comes out ahead of TikTok. More than a quarter of publishers (28%) said this year that their companies invest a lot in creating original content for YouTube, up from 18% last year. Meanwhile, fewer than one-fifth (17%) said they invest a lot in original content for TikTok, up from 11% last year.

So, while YouTube is slightly ahead of TikTok in terms of publishers’ investment in original content for the platforms, publishers are investing more in original content for both YouTube and TikTok this year than they did last year.