On October 27th of this year, TikTok announced its further rollout of a global partnership with the e-commerce platform Shopify. Shopify had already given some merchants access as part of a beta test, but as of the announcement, it is now available to all merchants across the US. Whilst this product is only available in the US for now, it is expected to be rolled out to other markets in 2021.
This integration between TikTok and Shopify allows merchants to create and run advertising campaigns on TikTok from within the Shopify dashboard. Merchants will be able to create in-feed shoppable video ads using their product feeds and track sales and revenue using the TikTok pixel. The user-friendly integration they have created means this feature is not out of bounds for smaller merchants, who may struggle to create video content otherwise.
As you can imagine, this rollout has come at the perfect time for US clients with Black Friday fast approaching.
All Response Media viewpoint
The move in general was expected. With most social platforms moving more and more into the e-commerce and shoppable ad space, it was only a matter of time before TikTok announced a similar feature.
From our point of view, this product offering can only be a good thing for some of our clients. It is giving us more options to reach customers in new and creative ways. TikTok is especially important for those whose audience skews younger. 52% of UK TikTok users are under 25 and with the younger generations moving away from the likes of Facebook, we need to be able to reach that younger audience in new ways, with messaging that appeals to them.
TikTok, by its nature, is hard to advertise on due to it being user-generated video content. You need to be very creative with your ad and messaging to ensure it fits with the content around it. As an agency, it is not always our go-to platform when it comes to our recommendations to clients. The majority of what we do needs to drive sales or some form of conversion, and it is not the easiest to do on TikTok, especially without the right creative. But with this new partnership between TikTok and Shopify, e-commerce clients will very easily be able to create ads that fit the platform, whilst also driving a more sales heavy message.
Hopefully, come 2021, this will be rolled out to the UK and other European markets, providing e-commerce clients with additional scope for testing outside of current social channels.
Read more information on our digital services.
