TikTok may be big in Asia, but its U.S. user base is a goldmine

As the 2025 holiday season hits its stride, eMarketer is explaining just how much American users impact TikTok‘s bottom line. The data firm published a report in which it claims that U.S. users generate 41% of TikTok’s ad revenue, even though they only account for 10% of the app’s overall user count.

eMarketer backed up its research by citing another recent dataset published by Edison Research. That report claimed that 83% of U.S. TikTok users have taken a relevant action after viewing an ad on the platform. For 43% of those respondents, the action in question was a purchase.

These statistics are especially interesting as they relate to TikTok’s operating status in the U.S. Back when federal politicians were still debating whether to enforce the Biden administration’s “divest-or-ban” law (which targeted TikTok in particular), we argued that the U.S. needs TikTok more than TikTok needs the U.S. After all, when you look at parent company ByteDance’s earnings outside of America, its sales figures on the U.S. version of TikTok Shop don’t seem so impressive.

The eMarketer report tells a different story. Markets like China may account for the lion’s share of ByteDance’s outsized valuation, but the purchasing power of U.S. users — and the sophistication

of ad offerings available there — are too big for TikTok to ignore.

“Drop this into any deck questioning TikTok’s role in your media mix,” eMarketer advises in its report. “Even with the app’s future uncertain, this chart makes the case for why the US market still commands attention and budget. Use it to defend domestic TikTok investment despite regulatory headwinds.”

Advertisers who have heeded that message during the holiday season have seen significant returns on their investments. With help from stars like Kim Kardashian, TikTok had its biggest Black Friday weekend ever, hauling in $500 million of sales in the U.S. On a quarter-to-quarter basis, the numbers are even more striking. By taking in $19 billion in quarterly sales, TikTok Shop turned itself into as big of a U.S. ecommerce hub as eBay.

With numbers like those, TikTok has plenty of incentive to keep its business running in the U.S. Thanks to the Trump administration, it seems like that mission will be accomplished — though no ban-averting deal has been made official just yet.