Secure your place at the Digiday Media Buying Summit in Nashville, March 2-4
Digiday+ Research: TikTok is hot, but agencies are skeptical of whether it works
TikTok has captured the imagination of marketers and increasingly larger portions of their ad dollars as they hotly pursue the young cohort flocking daily to the platform by the millions. But these are early days of the platform’s appeal among the 86 agency execs surveyed in February that actually spend client budgets on TikTok — less than 20% say they are at least “confident” it works, far behind the social platforms that have dominated digital marketing for years now.
In general, agencies and their brand clients — 145 of who were polled in February — direct a fairly small amount of their media to non-Meta-owned social channels like TikTok along with Snapchat, Twitter, Pinterest and Reddit. The majority said they either spend a very small part of their budget on these channels — or none at all, which comes as somewhat of a surprise given the attention paid to them by the consuming public. Still, the fact that all these channels, save Reddit, register at all among advertisers spending a “large portion” or “very large portion” indicates their futures are bright as marketing options.
More in Media
From feeds to streets: How mega influencer Haley Baylee is diversifying beyond platform algorithms
Kalil is partnering with LinkNYC to take her social media content into the real world and the streets of NYC.
‘A brand trip’: How the creator economy showed up at this year’s Super Bowl
Super Bowl 2026 had more on-the-ground brand activations and creator participation than ever, showcasing how it’s become a massive IRL moment for the creator economy.
Media Briefing: Turning scraped content into paid assets — Amazon and Microsoft build AI marketplaces
Amazon plans an AI content marketplace to join Microsoft’s efforts and pay publishers — but it relies on AI com stop scraping for free.