After the announcement of the ban of use of various Chinese apps in India, what are the next steps the marketers need to take in order to continue with their promotions in India?
Which apps were banned and its impact
Three of the most prominent apps were TikTok, SHAREit and Likee and these users will very likely shift to other apps that provide similar experiences. Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, SnapChat, Firework, Moj from ShareChat can potentially take on these users from TikTok and Likee.
Let us look at the types of users that will be migrating to other apps from TikTok to understand the opportunity and their impact.
According to Music Ally, it is estimated that TikTok now has 120 million monthly active users in India, and according to Business of Apps, majority of users in India are male in their 20’s and 30’s. Additionally, according to the same media source, Indian users spend 38 minutes daily, which is lower compared to the global standard of 52 minutes according to Wallaroo Media.
Whatever the share of voice the advertisers had among the audience will be lost and will have to replace that with other medias to minimize its impact, which is also an opportunity to review and make further refinements to the marketing strategy.
What would be the media mix to continue to reach the lost app audience from TikTok?
As noted above, Facebook, Youtube, Instagram, SnapChat, Firework, Moj are still available and some of the social media sites such as Facebook are getting hit hard due to controversies surrounding their content guidelines in dealing with hate speech etc. which led to advertisers boycotting advertising on their properties. This could potentially lead to less competition among the advertisers leading to lower CPC, with higher impression share, and potentially more impressions than could have been otherwise due to the shift of users from TikTok and Likee as noted above. This presents a large opportunity for advertisers that would like to increase its share of voice in the India market.
Additionally, we are already seeing Instagram adopt similar features for the India market. Moreover, although this is far from the 15 second videos of TikTok, Youtube is now encouraging monetization of shorter form videos of 8 minutes rather than 10 minutes, which will be launched in late July 2020.
What are the suggested next steps?
For advertisers in TikTok India, although there may be other media opportunities, the initial suggestion would be to shift your marketing budget to the available competing social networking apps in India.
We will continue to monitor trends in India to make additional suggestions.