TikTok Tries For TV Viewership With Amazon Fire Deal

YouTube isn’t the only platform pushing living room viewership.

TikTok has done a deal with Amazon that sees an official TikTok app become available across all Fire TV devices in the U.S. and Canada, starting today.

“No more huddling around a cell phone to see the latest viral video–from your Fire TV, you can view and discover all your favorite TikTok videos,” Amazon said in a chirpy announcement posted on the Fire TV blog.

“TikTok is a household staple in our home and I’m thrilled the whole family can now enjoy their favorite TikTok videos together on the best screen in the house with TikTok on Fire TV,” Daniel Rausch, Amazon’s VP of entertainment devices and services, said in a statement.

Fire TV users who download the TikTok app to their device will have to log in with their usual account, and will see their feeds appear onscreen, including the For You and Following

The app comes with an autoplay feature, which will “serve a continuous content feed without interruptions between TikTok videos,” Amazon said.

TikTok and Amazon’s deal also covers the ecommerce giant’s Echo Show display screens; TikTok’s app will be available there soon, per Amazon.

This is not the first TV screen deal for TikTok–nor its first with Amazon. Its regular TikTok app is available on Google TV, Android TV, and some Samsung devices. And in August 2020, TikTok pacted with Amazon to roll out “More on TikTok,” a separate, sort of behind-the-scenes app that focuses on longer-form content like video compilations and interviews with creators and musicians. That app is still available on Fire TV devices, too.

When TikTok introduced More on TikTok, its head of global marketing Nick Tran said the platform made the jump to televisions because of an increase in co-viewing sparked by the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We know that during this time a lot of families and people are engaging together, as a collective group, to watch anything entertaining,” Tran told Business Insider. “We see a lot of co-viewing and it’s harder to do that on a mobile device, so we wanted to bring another outlet for them to watch it all.”