TikTok’s Focused View ad campaigns will reach users who are paying attention

On October 13, the second TikTok World event kicked off, and the brand summit began with a flurry of new announcements. TikTok is launching several new tools for advertisers and creators, including a new campaign type called Focused View and a feature called Profile Kit, which will be integrated with link-in-bio service Linktree.

“Over the past few years, we’ve seen communities on TikTok push the boundaries of the entertainment and marketing industries and what it means to engage with an audience,” reads a blog post that summarizes the TikTok World reveals. “Brands have become a core part of this entertainment experience by embracing storytelling, community, and creativity.”

TikTok showed advertisers an edge it has over its competitors

The buzzy app believes it can connect brands to attentive viewers who would be more likely to ignore ads on other platforms. It cited a 2021 report which claimed that 46% of TikTok users use the app without distractions or additional screens.

To capitalize on that tuned-in audience, TikTok is rolling out Focused View. The new campaign type is designed to reach viewers who are actually engaging with an ad — not just waiting for it to end. According to TikTok, “brands only pay when users have voluntarily watched an ad for at least 6 seconds or when they interacted with the ad within the first 6 seconds.”

TikTok touted strong early results for its distractionless campaigns. It also sees its platform as a great fit for brands that are looking to drive purchases. During TikTok World, it noted that videos tagged with the #TikTokMadeMeBuyIt hashtag now have more than 25 billion views.

Brands who hope to target the app’s highly-engaged audience will be enticed by shopping ads. TikTok’s take on shoppable spots will include a Product Sales objective for advertisers looking to track conversions. Three different shopping ad formats are available, including placements on both VOD and live content.

TikTok continues to battle Google in the arena of search

At TikTok World, brands learned about advantages that are native to the world’s buzziest short-form platform. At the same time, TikTok explained how it plans to gain ground on its rivals.

After emerging as a major threat to Google’s dominance of the search business earlier this year, TikTok is honing in on a specific, oft-searched topic: movie showtimes. Showtimes on TikTok will show trailers, movie times, and location-based theater info to users who look up current films. The app is invited theater chains in the U.S. to link Showtimes to their respective ticketing services.

With Showtimes, TikTok is doubling down on its search engine status despite Google’s efforts to consolidate its advantage. The search giant recently announced a redesign of certain results pages in hopes of matching the visual and interactive elements that are present on TikTok.

TikTok also has an answer for competitors like YouTube and Instagram, which are trying to encourage original content rather than reposts that originated on TikTok. The app’s Profile Kit, available through its developer portal, lets users display up to six videos on an external site.

The feature is designed to be used on creator homepages, which are typically accessed via URLs powered by link-in-bio services. Linktree, one of the leading companies in that industry, will team up with TikTok to spread the platform’s vertical videos across the web. According to TechCrunch, Linktree was the first company to make its links-in-bio available on TikTok.