TikTok Reportedly Piloting New Ad Product, An Audience Network, In Asia

TikTok is reportedly piloting a native audience network for advertisers in Asia — a product that would enable marketers to harness TikTok’s targeting technology to  purchase ads that would air off the platform on a network of third-party apps.

AdWeek first reported the discovery of the audience network test in the East Asian market, citing developer documents for TikTok in China and Japan — where it counts a collective 260 million users. TikTok is by no means the first platform to launch an audience network — Facebook, LinkedIn, and Snapchat all offer similar products to prospective advertisers.

On TikTok, media buyers can choose to purchase full-page mobile video ads, AdWeek

reports, or the rewarded videos ads that appear within free games and apps on the Apple App Store and Google Play Store, as well as similar hubs in China, including TapTap, Xiaomi, and Meizu. When buying against the audience network, advertisers can also choose to blacklist apps in risque categories, AdWeek notes.

The outlet also suggests that the Asian test signals that TikTok could soon launch an audience network in the U.S. as well.

TikTok clocked 667 million global downloads last year to become the fourth most-downloaded app globally. AdWeek reports that TikTok users worldwide have spent $75 million on in-app currencies to tip creators. In addition to the audience network, the company also serves as a hub for numerous sponsored challenges, and it began experimenting with different ad formats in the U.S. and Europe last January. More recently, the company has dipped its toes into the ecommerce space.