Moneyball: TikTok Adds Zips To Targeting Options
This week we’re handing the keyboard to NuVoodoo marketing guru Mike O’Connor.
TikTok’s new targeting options enhance the tool kit for radio stations marketing to Zoomers or Millennials in zip codes where Nielsen meters are installed, or diaries fall. In fact, any business targeting a hyper-local audience can benefit. Here’s what you need to know:
TikTok’s unique video format, diverse audience, and curated algorithm have combined to result in a powerful advertising platform, where users spend an average of 95 minutes daily according to data from the social network, with 55% making purchases after seeing a brand on the platform.
Rapid audience growth has enabled TikTok to expand its selection of advertising capabilities, but geotargeting had remained limited in scope, no narrower than the DMA level (or more recently the county level in some larger markets). But for radio stations playing the hot zip marketing game to influence ratings, or for businesses catering mostly to customers from the immediate surrounding neighborhood, TikTok has remained low on the list of useful granular targeting options for digital advertising, despite the explosion in its everyday use by users in their teens, twenties, and early thirties.
TikTok’s Steady Growth Makes It a Viable Choice for Stations and Other Advertisers Targeting Gen Z and Young Millennials
According to NuVoodoo’s most recent digital media study, conducted in the summer of 2023, TikTok now ranks among the top 3 most used apps by members of Generation Z (14- to 26-year-olds), with better than three in five using the platform daily or even more often. When we consider only one in five study respondents among our 2,504-person total sample of 14-54-year-olds who model as radio listeners likely to participate in the ratings (RPS Yes), a whopping two-thirds say they now use TikTok at least every day.
Nearly 40% of all Zoomers and a third of Millennials admit to using TikTok compulsively, checking the app four times each day or more. That type of compulsive use drives faster campaign impact through the potential for repeat ad exposure. So, with zip code targeting and nearly half of all likely ratings respondents now using TikTok at this compulsive level, the platform is now a potentially powerful radio ratings weapon.
In our summer NuVoodoo study, in addition to platform use metrics, we also measured potential ad effectiveness. In a future post, we’ll show how well respondents rated TikTok on the ad attention scale compared to other walled-garden apps. Plus, we’ll share advanced targeting techniques and review some of the most effective TikTok ad units.
NuVoodoo conducts research, builds digital products, and conducts marketing campaigns informed by our own proprietary market research to help advertisers target just the right person at just the right time – and without spending a dollar more than necessary to be optimally effective. Reach us at tellmemore@nuvoodoo.com to learn more about integrating TikTok and other ad strategies into your next campaign. We look forward to discussing your needs.
