The majority of TikTok creators in the United States don’t believe the platform will be banned within a year, according to a new survey of people who make money from posting, and most haven’t seen the brands they working to shift their marketing budget away from the app. TikTok content is shared exclusively with WIRED.
The findings show that TikTok’s influencer economy is largely free of existential fears after Congress passed a law last month that puts the app’s future in the United States in jeopardy. The bill requires TikTok to separate from its Chinese parent company within a year or face a nationwide ban; TikTok is challenge the constitutionality of that measure in court.
Fohr, one Influencer marketing platform connecting creators with customers for sponsored content, polled US-based TikTok creators on its platform with at least 10,000 followers. It received 200 responses, half from people who consider influencers their only source of income. Among respondents, 62% said they don’t think TikTok will be banned by 2025, while the remaining 38% said they believe it will happen.
Some creators may be skeptical that a ban will actually happen after they watch it Trump White House And Conference has tried and failed multiple times to crack down on TikTok over the past few years. This platform is so far only available continue to develop more common in America, alarm sounds in Silicon Valley about the threat its competition poses. There is also a possibility that TikTok will be sold to a group of American investors—Several interested bidders have emerged—even though TikTok has made it clear that such an acquisition is practically impossible.
Some creators are simply struggling to believe the strange situation their favorite app has encountered. “I’m in denial, because I think the TikTok ban is ridiculous,” an anonymous creator told Fohr via his survey. “I think our government has better things to worry about than banning a platform where people are allowed to express their views and opinions.”
Most creators said they have not lost business to brands paying for marketing content on TikTok since the new law was signed: 83% of responding influencers said the Their sponsorship is not affected. But the rest have seen signs of brands pulling back from the app or at least diversifying their marketing. About 7% said brands had paused or canceled a campaign they were working on, and 8% said brands had asked to move deliverables to another social media platform or at least asked about such change.
Companies may be reluctant to move away from TikTok as it becomes one of the most popular avenues for consumers to discover new products, especially from Small business. Over the past year, TikTok has tried to leverage that influence to create a new revenue stream through an e-commerce feature called TikTok Shop. Via 11 percent number of U.S. households that have made purchases through TikTok Shop since September 2023, according to credit card transaction data published in April by research firm Earnest Analytics.
It doesn’t appear that the passage of the divestment bill last month caused people to spend less time on TikTok or avoid the app altogether. The platform’s popularity in US app stores remains largely consistent over the past month, according to market intelligence firm Sensor Tower. And Fohr found that 60% of creators said their video views remained the same, 28% said they saw a decrease in video views, and 10% said their engagement increased. These changes could simply be due to regular changes TikTok makes to its algorithm, changes in the content influencers are sharing, or the whims of users when watch video.
The rise of TikTok has prompted American tech giants to imitate many of its features. Google’s YouTube is pushing the Shorts format And Meta’s Instagram launch story. Fohr’s survey found that if creators start leaving TikTok because of uncertainty about the app’s future or because of a ban, Instagram will benefit the most. A clear majority of creators—67%—said they considered it the best alternative for growing their audience, while 22% cited YouTube. Only a small portion points to Snapchat, Pinterest and other platforms.
However, some creators say it’s harder to get attention on Instagram than on TikTok, and one noted that Meta’s platform doesn’t offer anything equivalent to TikTok’s Creator Program, program that pays users based on their views and other engagement metrics. video received.
On social platforms, the most common way for creators to get paid is to sign deals with brands to post about their products. But Fohr’s survey also shows the growth of a new monetization scheme called the TikTok Creative Challenge that the app launched last year. It allows companies to post requests for creators to create marketing videos that brands can then use on their own channels. Influencer be compensated based on how well their videos perform in terms of views and engagement.
In Fohr’s survey, that type of content, known as UGC, represented the largest source of TikTok revenue for 18% of creators. Regardless of what happens with TikTok in the US, history suggests that it may not be long before its US competitors start rolling out their own user-generated content initiatives. Surname.
