Using TikTok fosters growth, but also challenging for big businesses

by Almira Louise S. Martinez, Reporter

Maximizing all features of the social media platform TikTok poses high reward for businesses, TikTok Head of Partnerships – Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam Sea Yen Ong said on Thursday.   

“When we look at the advertisers and how they measure return on ad spend (ROAS), TikTok is actually 2 times stronger across media averages,” Mr. Ong said in a roundtable discussion.  

Since its launch in 2016, the social media giant TikTok has grown to over 325 million active users in Southeast Asia, wherein 49.9 million are in the Philippines.  

In research done by the application, 61% of users have purchased directly on TikTok or online after seeing an ad on the platform.  

With a ‘test and learn’ mindset, a multinational company experienced a positive outcome after signing up on the application.  

“With TikTok, we actually saw it as overtaking one of the big platforms where we get most of our revenue just in this year alone,” Nestlé Philippines eBusiness Digital Marketing Manager Clarisse Francesca Yeung said at the TikTok Unboxed Philippines 2024.  

Ms. Yeung pointed out that their company earned triple-digit millions after a year on the entertainment medium despite experiencing hardships in their first few months.

“We don’t even know how many accounts to open… We just tried one and we tried to make it an effort to make videos every day,” she said. 

Big brands are also challenged to produce videos that are different from the traditional long-form and horizontal formats for TV commercials, according to Ms. Yeung.  

“It was really difficult getting videos out because they wanted a really nicely done video,” she said.  

Further, Ms. Yeung said that brands often struggle to adapt to online content because it “looks so mainstream, especially if you’re handling a very premium brand.”  

“It’s more of unlearning to learn something,” she added.