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Digital, traditional, and total media ad spending growth will all accelerate in 2024, although only modestly. The outlook has stabilized for most countries and regions, even if spectacular growth is harder than ever to find.

Both companies are under severe pressure from low-cost competitor Pinduoduo, as well as newer platforms like Douyin, Kuaishou, and Xiaohongshu that are winning over shoppers with a skillful blend of entertainment and commerce.

Recent Supreme Court rulings could aid TikTok: The high court will rule on the platform鈥檚 ban months after it made strong statements about government interference with digital free speech.

Despite the threat of a ban, the company is pressing on with its ecommerce ambitions, particularly with regards to livestreaming, as it tries to replicate the playbook that turned sister app Douyin into a major retail player in China.

Here鈥檚 what a TikTok-less America would look like for marketers, users, and creators, based on our latest forecasts.

Kuaishou, Meituan, and Douyin will post standout ad revenue growth in 2024 despite China鈥檚 enduring economic malaise. This achievement will come in part at the expense of their legacy domestic competitors, as we project Baidu, Alibaba, and JD.com will see middling results this year. Reddit, Spotify, and Apple are also noteworthy.

And the combined footprint of the two apps (Douyin in China and TikTok in the rest of the world) will stand at 1.70 billion monthly users in 2023, amounting to 36.5% of worldwide internet users and 45.2% of social network users. By 2026, Douyin will have almost the same number of users as China鈥檚 popular super app, WeChat鈥攁nother sign of 叠测迟别顿补苍肠别鈥檚 growing dominance.

Beyond the chart: China is absent from this ranking as its social users are on TikTok鈥檚 sister app, Douyin. This year, Douyin鈥檚 penetration among social users in China will be 77.4%, far higher than TikTok鈥檚 penetration in any country, per our forecast. Douyin is also a retail powerhouse in China, but TikTok users in the US have been slower to adopt social commerce.

TikTok is closing the gap with Instagram in Southeast Asia, while its sister app in China, Douyin, will gain on WeChat鈥檚 lead. TikTok has already overtaken Instagram in Thailand and Vietnam, and the apps are neck and neck in the Philippines. Meanwhile in China, the difference in users on Douyin and WeChat will be negligible by 2026.

Government censorship hampered the development of social media in China for many years, and although platforms like Douyin and Kuaishou eventually learned to flourish, strict privacy controls limit their ceilings as well. An ecommerce player, Alibaba, led from the start.

Despite TikTok鈥檚 popularity and influence in the US, ByteDance gets the majority of its revenues from China, where it operates another short-form video app named Douyin. We expect Douyin to bring in $20.81 billion in ad revenues in China this year鈥攃lose to The Information鈥檚 $20 billion estimate for TikTok鈥檚 yearly revenues outside of China.

Big ambitions: Douyin had merchandise volume of over $200 billion last year, and ByteDance executives hope TikTok can reach a similar level in the US by 2028, with roughly the same amount coming from the rest of the world, per The Information. For the sake of the comparison, that鈥檚 nearly double the revenues Target generated last year.

In China, Douyin is the dominant ByteDance-owned short-form video app rather than TikTok. ByteDance isn鈥檛 just focusing on video, though, and is rolling out a number of lifestyle, commerce, and delivery features to create a super app comparable to Gojek or WeChat.

Offering deep discounts and other incentives is a tried-and-true route to acquiring both customers and sellers in China, where TikTok鈥檚 counterpart Douyin now stands as the fourth-largest ecommerce player. But livestream shopping in the US is unlikely to ever reach the scale of China, where it will account for 22.0% of retail ecommerce sales in 2024.

And the combined footprint of the two apps (Douyin in China and TikTok in the rest of the world) will stand at 1.70 billion monthly users in 2023, amounting to 36.5% of worldwide internet users and 45.2% of social network users. By 2026, Douyin will have almost the same number of users as China鈥檚 popular super app, WeChat鈥攁nother sign of 叠测迟别顿补苍肠别鈥檚 growing dominance.

The aim is to replicate a model that has worked well for live shopping pioneers QVC and HSN, as well as for TikTok鈥檚 sister company Douyin in China. The company is also testing an AI feature that could make all TikTok posts shoppable by identifying products for sale on TikTok Shop that are similar to items shown in the video.

This year, over a fifth of the world鈥檚 population will be users of TikTok or its Chinese counterpart, Douyin. There will be 1.73 billion users of TikTok or Douyin this year. TikTok will account for 940.2 million of that total, meaning Douyin鈥檚 user base鈥攅xclusively in China鈥攊s almost the same size. Combined ad revenues for TikTok and Douyin will be up 23.3% this year.

The brand鈥檚 livestreams on Douyin attract roughly 800,000 unique viewers per show, helped by a more laid-back style compared with the more traditional 鈥渉ard-sell鈥� approach favored by China鈥檚 top creators. In Q1, Zara saw a 50% increase year over year in the number of products that sold out in most sizes, according to data from Edited cited by Reuters.

The big takeaway: If any platform can make social commerce happen, it鈥檚 likely to be TikTok, given its proven ability to mint trends and drive sales鈥攏ot to mention the sterling example sister app Douyin has set in China.

叠测迟别顿补苍肠别鈥檚 Douyin predicts livestreaming will reach a saturation point within the next two years. Prediction. Consumer confidence in China will improve only slightly in 2023 as the government loosens pandemic-related restrictions. This will provide a mild boost to retail consumption鈥攂ut not enough to generate a significant bounce.

TikTok鈥檚 rationale is even simpler: The social platform is hoping to build on the success sister app Douyin found in China, and turn its highly engaged user base and its demonstrated purchase intent into a revenue opportunity.

We expect retail livestreaming ecommerce sales via apps like WeChat, Taobao Live, and Douyin (China鈥檚 version of TikTok) to reach $514.20 billion this year. However, Meta (and others) found that the US market is very different from China or other Asian markets where livestream shopping has flourished.

Wider adoption is helped by nearly every major Chinese ecommerce and social platform participating in live commerce, including Alibaba鈥檚 Tmall and Taobao, JD.com, Pinduoduo, and WeChat, along with short-video apps Douyin (TikTok鈥檚 sister app in China) and Kuaishou. Other mobile-first markets in Asia-Pacific hold promise for livestreaming ecommerce.

Beauty brands can take advantage of a well-developed ecommerce ecosystem to sell directly to consumers online via platforms like Alibaba鈥檚 Tmall, WeChat mini programs, and Douyin (TikTok鈥檚 counterpart in China). For bigger-ticket purchases, one-on-one white-glove service across online and offline channels is a baseline customer expectation. Sources. Altagamma. Bain & Company. Bizrate Insights.

While TikTok is a crown jewel of the company, the majority of 叠测迟别顿补苍肠别鈥檚 revenues come from the Chinese counterpart Douyin, which it could push into other markets to make up for the US loss.